The evaluation of heavy metal content in the crayons produced by recycling the plastic waste

Abstract

The production of crayons by recycling the plastic was 5-PP was conducted in this study. The plastic waste caused an environmental pollution due to the lack of awareness and low knowledge of the population to process waste. One type of waste with a large enough volume is plastic waste. The increase in plastic waste that continues to grow every day can lead to contamination of soil. To overcome this problem, the plastic waste was recycled become crayons to reduce the pollution and increase the utilization. The crayons were prepared by mixed the plastic waste, beeswax, paraffin wax, calcium carbonate (Merck), and some liquid pigments with an appropriate ratio. The crayons were characterized using XRF and SEM-EDX to understand the heavy metal content. The XRF characterization result provide the heavy metal content which Pb, Cr, and Hg were 23.4%, 3.68% and 0.09%, respectively. The SEM results also provide the surface morphology of the crayons with spready material. The EDX result also support the XRF result correspond with the heavy metal content. This study can reduce the plastic waste pollution in the future.