| abstract |
A method is provided which, when recycling constituent members of an absorbent article, enables efficiently recovering the constituent members from the absorbent article without rupturing the absorbent article. This method is for recovering constituent members from an absorbent article (1) which is provided with a front surface sheet (2), a back surface sheet (3), and an absorbent body (4) arranged between the front surface sheet and the back surface sheet, wherein the front surface sheet and/or the back surface sheet contains a film as a constituent member and the absorbent body contains an absorbent body material as a constituent member. This method involves a pretreatment step (S1) for soaking and swelling the absorbent article with water, a disintegration step (S2) for applying a physical impact to the swelled used absorbent article to disintegrate the used absorbent article into at least a film and an absorbent body material while maintaining their original shapes, and a separation step (S3) for separating the disintegrated film and absorbent body material while maintaining their original shapes. |