When you’ve shopped for a laptop computer, speaker or actually any tech product just lately, you’ll have come throughout the time period “post-consumer recycled” or PCR.
Maintain studying to be taught every thing you want to find out about PCR supplies, together with what they’re and the way they contribute to many manufacturers’ sustainability efforts.
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What’s post-consumer recycled (PCR)?
Put up-consumer recycled or PCR supplies are supplies salvaged from merchandise that might in any other case have ended up in landfills. This may embody the plastic from plastic bottles, the cardboard from cardboard bins and packaging and the aluminium from drink cans.
These supplies are collected and brought to recycling centres the place they’re melted down and remodeled into supplies that may be then used once more in new merchandise, thus extending their life span.
Not solely does this course of assist to maintain plastic, cardboard and aluminium out of landfills for longer, however it additionally reduces the necessity for brand new supplies to be produced which might have a dangerous impact on the atmosphere.
Put up-consumer recycled supplies fall beneath the umbrella class of recycled supplies alongside pre-consumer recycled supplies, which come from offcuts saved in the course of the manufacturing of a distinct product, and post-industrial recycled (PIR) supplies.
Sadly, PCR supplies can’t be recycled indefinitely as, over time, the supplies will degrade in high quality. This occurs steadily throughout every recycling course of. That stated, the actual fact these supplies will be reused a number of occasions implies that PCR nonetheless has its benefits over single-use plastic and different options.
In recent times, fairly just a few tech corporations have begun incorporating PCR supplies when constructing new merchandise as a part of their sustainability efforts.
Acer’s Aspire Vero, for instance, has a novel inexperienced and blue speckled look due to the inclusion of PCR plastics within the shell of the laptop computer. Not solely that, however the firm has since expanded the Vero line to incorporate projectors, desktop PCs, mice and screens – all made partially with PCR supplies.
PCR plastics can be discovered within the keycaps and audio system of the Asus Zenbook S 13 OLED and the woven Rewind material used all through Home of Marley’s headphones and audio system, together with the Get Collectively 2.