Why don’t we use reclaimed TPU material to produce TPU tape?

TPU is a kind of recyclable plastic material. It owns extension originally, which don’t need to add elasticizer additionally like PVC. Why TPU can be recycled? Because TPU is a kind of thermoplastic plastics, which can be melted into different shapes of products again and again. On contrast, thermosetting plastics can only melted into a shape once. After cooling, the thermosetting plastic product can not be melted again. Rubber is a kind of thermosetting plastic. Then some ask a question: why not use reclaimed TPU for TPU tape production? Here we come some reasons as follow.

1. Physical property

TPU tape is a kind of garment accessories, which is functional. When TPU tape is sewed on clothes, it is supposed to be anti-aging, anti-yellowing, laundry-resistant and won’t shrink after ironing. Therefore, the good physical property is the first important element of TPU tape. However, There are two main points will influence physical property of TPU tape. One is the production technology while another one refers to TPU raw material.

There are various types of TPU material from different brands. Generally, that in hardness of Shore 70A and 80A is popular for producing TPU tape. Besides, TPU materials from different brands own different physical property because material manufacturers own different recipes. As a professional TPU tape manufacturer, we don’t recommend reclaimed TPU material. After all, the stable quality is the promise to customers. However, reclaimed TPU material can not guarantee the stable performance. Generally, reclaimed TPU material mixes various types of TPU from different brands and different hardness.

2. Stable supply

Just as we described above, material manufacturers have to reclaim lots of TPU products, then process the reclaimed products into reclaimed TPU material. But reclaiming TPU products isn’t an easy work. When they lack reclaimed product, we will lack reclaimed material.

3. Impurities

Impurities is not easy to avoid for reclaimed TPU material. Once the material have impurities, TPU tape will be affected. For example, there will have black spots on TPU tape. TPU tape is made by extrusion technology. The raw material must go through the high temperature machine, no exception of the impurities. After baking with high temperature, the impurities carbonize into black spots on surface of TPU tape. Within the black spots, TPU tape may be easy to break after sewing on clothes.

Since the reasons above, we won’t use reclaimed TPU raw material to produce TPU tape. Although reclaimed material is much cheaper than the new one, we still remember one truth: you get what you pay for.