When choosing a suitable motorcycle trunk, it’s essential to pay attention to details such as the quality of the material used in its manufacturing. It’s precisely in this aspect, the raw material, that many people wonder: is the motorcycle trunk recyclable?
To understand more about the subject, one must analyze all the details of a motorcycle trunk. Here, we will talk about the trunks from iCbras, which manufactures trunks with high-density polyethylene resin or HDPE, a polymer that provides a highly resistant product.
Many people may not be aware, but the iCbras motorcycle trunk’s main raw material comes from shampoo bottles, detergent, cleaning materials, and oil drums, which would otherwise be discarded as waste, causing environmental harm.
With the use of new technologies in motorcycle trunk manufacturing, it’s possible to produce a trunk that is 99% recycled based on high-density polyethylene. This is beneficial both for the companies producing the parts and for society as a whole. After all, there is a growing need for increasingly sustainable processes.
And since this process is quite interesting, we invite you to discover how the recycling that forms a motorcycle trunk is done!
What are the recycling processes?
To produce a recycled trunk, it must go through the stages of: selection of recycled materials, grinding, cleaning, additive incorporation, extrusion, moving on to the injection stage, and assembling the trunk or box for a motorcycle courier.
It is not a simple process, especially considering that it is a process whose raw material, initially, was not made for the current purpose of creating a recycled trunk.
In the selection stage, plastic packaging is separated according to the similarity found in their materials. Thus, similar materials are selected and separated for the grinding stage.
The grinding of the packaging is extremely important since it is in this process that the plastic is chopped and reduced into small cuts, going through extrusion until it is granulated. By granulating the material, it becomes moldable, allowing the creation of new forms. From this process, the granules can be used as raw material for various products.
In the additive incorporation process, chemical compounds are added to the plastic materials to reduce costs, modify properties, and facilitate the overall process, also considering the item’s malleability.
As for the extrusion process, it is very important for the recycled trunk. This is because, through a combination of heat, moisture, and mechanical work, the raw material to be used is altered, allowing for different structures (especially in terms of functionality).
In the assembly process, we reach the final stage! Basically, the results of all processes up to this point are organized. Therefore, after all the procedures are done, we have a motorcycle trunk as a product that is recycled and recyclable.
HDPE is a material with enormous ease of recycling, so the recycled trunk is indeed a very viable alternative for those who want an object capable of storing things and contributing to the environment. It’s efficiency combined with sustainability!
Blow molding and injection process
iCbras uses two processes for trunk production: the injection process and the blow molding process.
Both processes use temperature for heating the raw material and extrusion, ending with injection or blowing as previously planned.
Injection or the blow molding process allows the production of plastic materials in various constructive forms, which can be hollow, such as trunks, PET bottles, shampoo and detergent packaging, and storage tanks, or injected items such as caps, pins, closures, and document holders.
This process allows the use of 99% recycled material and ensures that no substances are lost.
Advantages of the recycled trunk
Each trunk takes 150 to 170 shampoo bottles to be produced. In this perspective, one can reflect on how beneficial this type of construction is for society and the environment.
Instead of waiting thousands of years for these packages to decompose, we have developed an alternative means for them to be used.
In 2 years, iCbras has already removed more than 70 tons of plastic packaging from the environment until the first quarter of 2022. With the use of HDPE as the raw material for trunks, it is expected that this number will grow more and more over the years.
Therefore, the movement to prioritize recycled trunks is also about transforming the world into a more sustainable place, recycling the old, creating something new, combining technology with respect for nature.