Recycling post-consumption polystyrene disposable cups for construction of pending luminaires

Abstract

The growing use of polymeric materials for single use, opposing the long decomposition time, it is necessary to think about proposals to minimize the environmental impact resulting from the disposal in nature. Thus, an alternative is recycling waste into raw material for commercially viable manufactures. Thus, the present work aims to build mechanically recycled crystal polystyrene (PS) luminaires from disposable cups. The cups were collected fortnightly for six months, subjected to screening and drying. After this stage, the cups were ground and processed in an extruder, the material was cooled in water, dried and granulated, to be processed by injection in a next step. The materials processed by extrusion-injection were analyzed by the following techniques: infrared spectroscopy, mechanical tensile test, flame test, fusion, Beilstein test and yellowing test. After characterization, the test pieces for the construction of the luminaire were drilled. The mechanical test, as it has additives in the composition of disposable cups, showed a better result than expected, making the recycled material more elastic, which makes the luminaire more resistant. Infrared spectroscopy analyzes, compared to other studies already performed for PS, have very similar results. Regarding the yellowing test, no changes were visually identified. Therefore, the construction of pendant lamps proved to be an effective and sustainable alternative to post-consumer disposable cups.