Sony to sell its recycled PC on open market

Starting this fall, Japan-based consumer products giant Sony Corporation will have a new side-business: selling recycled plastics.

Starting Oct. 1, 2014, Sony will begin selling its flame-retardant recycled plastic, Sorplas (Sustainable Oriented Recycled Plastic), outside its Sony Group. The company will target the sale of the recycled plastic to manufacturers in Japan and abroad.

According to Sony, Sorplas is made from polycarbonate plastic recycled from materials such as optical discs from discarded DVDs and optical sheets (light-diffusing films) used in LCD televisions. The recycled materials use Sony’s sulfur-based flame retardant to achieve a durable, heat-resistant plastic that uses up to 99-percent-recycled materials, the company said.

Sony first put Sorplas to practical use in 2011, adopting the material in its Bravia series of LCD televisions. Since then, Sorplas has been incorporated into a wide variety of Sony products.

“Generally speaking, regular flame-retardant recycled polycarbonate plastic contains around 55 per cent added new polycarbonate plastic and approximately 15 per cent flame retardant,” Sony said. Sorplas “achieves flame resistance equivalent to conventional flame retardant but with only the tiniest amount added – less than one per cent overall (or less than one-tenth of conventional flame retardant weight). This allows the properties of polycarbonate plastic to be retained.”

The recycled plastic will be sold at prices comparable to more conventional flame-retardant polycarbonate plastic, Sony said.