On a large scale how would you physically separate plastic products from paper products?

Question

This is a chemistry question and I am not sure what the answer would exactly be.

Answer 1

Paper dissolves in water. Plastics don't. Soak the paper/plastic mixture until the paper turns to pulp. Then force the mixture through a filtering gate to recover the plastic. The water and pulp will pass through but the plastic will not. Then dry the water/pulp mixture to recover the paper.

Answer 2

i was looking for the answer as well!

did you get the question out of the Cu IN LaB chem lab manual?

lol