Composite plastic materials produced from waste materials and method of producing same

A method of producing from waste material a fiber reinforced composite material for use in injection and compression molding and extrusion processes, said method comprising receiving separately streams of waste material from construction sites, from households, from retail stores disposing of unsaleable plastic products and from industrial sites, downsizing the waste material in each stream into small particles and storing such particles from each stream separately in silos ready for blending, said silos providing sources of the following types of materials, namely:

• Group 1. Inorganic filler particles such as glass, concrete, brick and drywall;
• Group 2. Organic filler particles such as thermoset plastics such as rubber and polyurethane foam;
• Group 3. Organic reinforcement fibers such as polyethylene terephthalate (PET) fibers and Nylon fibers which have high melting points substantially above 200° C.;
• and
• Group 4. Common low melting point plastics such as high density polyethylene, linear low density polyethylene, low density polyethylene, thermoplastic polyolefin, athermoplastic elastomer, and polystrene which have a melting point in the range of about 125° C. to 200° C.;
• formulating a composite material by intimately mixing materials selected from said groups of materials, said formulation including at least about 20% by weight of high melting point plastic fibers selected from Group 3 and at least about 20% by weight of said low melting point plastic selected from Group 4;
• and
• processing said formulation by heating same to a temperature to melt said low melting point plastic material while leaving said fiber material in fibrous form and passing said heated material through an extrusion die as an extrudite stream and cutting said stream into composite material pellets ready for processing in injection molding and extrusion equipment.