回收的塑料瓶到哪里去了?试着看看你的车下面

回收的塑料瓶到哪里去了?试着看看你的车下面。

Every minute, people around the world purchase 1 million plastic bottles, which adds up to roughly 526 billion bottles every year. Much of this plastic ends up discarded in landfills, rivers or oceans, often with devastating effects for wildlife. Many people are now trying to cut down on plastic use, while also turning these single-use plastics into something useful — like auto parts.

每分钟，世界各地的人们购买100万个塑料瓶，这意味着每年大约有5260亿瓶。大部分塑料最终被丢弃在垃圾填埋场、河流或海洋中，通常对野生动物造成毁灭性的影响。现在很多人都在努力减少塑料的使用，同时把这些一次性塑料变成有用的东西——比如汽车零部件。

The Ford Motor Company has used recycled plastic as far back as the 1990s. Today, in an effort to reduce its carbon footprint, the company is transforming recycled plastic into vehicle parts, specifically underbody shields on all cars and SUVs, as well as wheel liners on F-Series trucks.

福特汽车公司早在20世纪90年代就开始使用回收塑料。如今，为了减少碳足迹，该公司正在将回收塑料转化为汽车零部件，尤其是所有汽车和suv的车身下护罩，以及f系列卡车的轮毂内衬。

“The underbody shield is a large part, and for a part that big, if we use solid plastic, it would likely weigh three times as much,” says Thomas Sweder, design engineer with Ford Motor Company. “We look for the most durable and highest-performing materials to work with to make our parts, and in this case, we are also creating many environmental benefits.”

福特汽车公司设计工程师托马斯•斯维德表示:“车身下部的护罩是一个很大的部件，对于这么大的一个部件，如果我们使用固体塑料，它的重量可能是它的三倍。”“我们寻找最耐用、性能最高的材料来制造我们的零部件，在这种情况下，我们也创造了许多环境效益。”

Recycled plastic is ideal for automotive parts due to its light weight, which offers additional benefits such as improving a vehicle's aerodynamics and reducing cabin noise. In fact, the all-new 2020 Ford Escape boasts an exceptionally quiet environment, thanks to plastics.

回收塑料由于重量轻，是汽车零部件的理想材料，它提供了额外的好处，如改善汽车的空气动力学和降低机舱噪音。事实上，全新的2020款福特Escape拥有一个特别安静的环境，这要归功于塑料。

The use of plastics in vehicle parts has grown exponentially in the past decade, especially in underbody shields. Ford estimates it uses around 1.2 billion recycled plastic bottles every year — that’s about 250 bottles per vehicle on average.

在过去的十年里，塑料在汽车零部件上的应用呈指数级增长，尤其是在车身下部的防护罩上。福特估计，它每年使用大约12亿个回收塑料瓶，平均每辆车使用大约250瓶。

How exactly does your plastic water bottle turn into an aerodynamic auto part? After you toss the bottle into the recycling bin, it's eventually combined with thousands of others and shredded into tiny pieces. These pieces are then sold to a supplier, who turns them into a fiber by melting and extruding them. This fiber is mixed with other elements in a textile process, then used to create a sheet of material that can be formed into vehicle parts.

你的塑料水瓶是如何变成空气动力汽车部件的?当你把瓶子扔进回收箱后，它最终会和其他成千上万的瓶子混合在一起，变成碎片。然后这些碎片被卖给供应商，供应商通过熔化和挤压将它们变成纤维。这种纤维在纺织过程中与其他元素混合，然后用来制造一种可以制成汽车部件的材料。

With one of the largest companies in the United States committed to working with recycled plastics, there’s hope others will follow suit. More than 8 million pieces of plastic pollution find their way into our oceans every day, and that number is still increasing. Finding new and innovative ways to recycle and reuse single-use plastics is essential for our planet and its inhabitants.

美国最大的公司之一致力于回收塑料，希望其他公司也能效仿。每天有超过800万的塑料污染进入我们的海洋，而且这个数字还在增加。寻找新的和创新的方法来回收和再利用一次性塑料对我们的地球和它的居民是至关重要的。

“Ford is among the leaders when it comes to using recycled materials such as this, and we do it because it makes sense technically and economically as much as it makes sense for the environment,” Sweder says. “This material meets all of our robust specifications for durability and performance.”

Sweder说:“在使用这类回收材料方面，福特处于领先地位，我们这样做是因为它在技术和经济上都有意义，就像它对环境有意义一样。”“这种材料符合我们所有的耐用性和性能指标。”