Recycling: Plastics Primer
So you made a resolution to start recycling more or you think you’re doing a good job because you’re recycling all of your plastic containers. Great - I applaud your efforts. Question, though - do you know what plastics your garbage company actually accepts for recycling? Do you ever look at the numbers on all of your plastics? Have you ever wondered what the heck those numbers mean?
Let’s do this. Flip over that soda bottle or take-out food container and look for the recycling symbol with the number in the middle. Now go ask your bestest friend ever, Google, for the website of your local town or your waste disposal company. See what kinds of plastics they accept. You might also want to ask Google where you can actually drop-off those plastics that your garbage company won’t collect curbside.
Most curbside recycling programs only take #1 and #2 plastics. It’s frustrating because we should be able to recycle all of these plastics, but its really hard to find someone to take them. Try Earth 911 to see what you can recycle. Want to know what to do with different items rather than throwing them away? Check out the Lime site.
Alright - now that you have that down - lets look at the various types of plastics out there. There are 6 and then a frankenplastic - #7.
#1 PET/PETE - Polyethylene Terephthalate - Soda bottles, water bottles
#2 HPDE - High Density Polyethelyne - Toys, detergent bottles, shampoo, milk jugs, etc.
#3 V or PVC - Polyvinyl Chloride - PVC plumbing, meat plastic wrapping, shower curtains - these offgas a lot - very distinguished smell
#4 LDPE - Low Density Polyethelyne - Newpaper bags, grocery bags - take these back to the grocery store for recycling
#5 PP - Polypropylene - Yogurt containers, margarine tubs, sour cream containers, Tupperware, diapers
#6 PS - Polystyrene - Most people think this is styrofoam - it is - but that’s the expanded polystyrene. Tons of take out food containers, plastic utensils, CD jewel cases
#7 OTHER - Any mix of 1-6 plastics
[...] where shoppers can return the billions of bags that the bag boy gives you. If you remember from our plastic recycling primer the other day, these are #4 bags. So you could probably sneak in the plastic sleeves that your [...]