ABSTRACT
The industrial-scale production of synthetic polymers started in the 1940s. Since then, the production, consumption, and waste generation rate of plastic solid waste (PSW) has increased considerably. Thus, waste recycling has been a center of attention of many researchers in the past few decades. Such research is often driven by changes in regulatory and environmental issues. Plastics are used in various applications-from coating and wiring, to packaging, lms, covers, bags, automobiles, containers, and aircrafts. Thus, there is a huge amount of waste generated, which for environmental reasons needs to be recycled and reused. The increasing cost of landll disposal and interest in support of recycling has meant that such recycling of materials should increase. Natural bers have gained importance as reinforcement in composite materials. The majority of the research has been conducted on natural bers used as reinforcement with plastics. Plastics are made from crude oil. Recycling of plastics would also mean saving of this crucial natural resource. Several issues have gained relevance-recycling of such materials, use of natural bers in recycled polymers to improve mechanical properties, their water absorption and effect on properties, issues such as incineration, and life cycle analysis (LCA) for this class of composites. In this chapter, these issues and the latest research in this eld are discussed.
