The recycling rates of plastics in the US is approximately 10% - far below national goals.  The primary reason is that the properties of goods made from recyclates plastics is inferior to that from virgin.   One reason for the reduced properties is that post-consumer plastics frequently are mixed together.  Here, we are interested in studying the fundamentals of processing of mixed thermoplastics, such as polyolefins, to understand the cause of the property reduction and ways to reduce it.  We utilize a variety of methodologies:  rheology, Raman spectroscopy, optical microscopy and x-ray scattering to measure the kinetics of the flow and crystallization behaviors.