Plastics Facts:
• Plastics are made from oil or coal treated with a heat and pressure process, and mixed with a variety of stabilizers and fillers. Different “recipes” create various properties such as strength, stiffness, and transparency. The substance is then shaped or molded.
• There are over 50,000 types of plastic. Plastics must be sorted for recycling since each type melts at a different temperature and has different properties. The plastics industry has developed a series of codes to label the seven major types of plastic. These are generally found on the bottom of the containers, within a triangle.
• Plastic is recycled by melting each type of plastic with a comparable type. Often plastic resin pellets are then formed, creating the building blocks for making plastic products.
• Statistics show that recycling for the type of plastic found in water bottles in 2002 has stagnated in the United States. In 1995, we used 1.95 billion pounds of this plastic. Now, we use 4 billion pounds of it in bottles. In 1995, the recycling rate for these containers was 39.7 percent. In 2002, it was 19.9 percent.
• While it is technically possible to recycle black plastic, it is not done because there is not enough black plastic in the waste stream to justify the cost of recycling it; for practical reasons, black plastic can only be recycled with other black plastic. Black and other colored plant nursery pots are reusable.
• Certain plastics, like the ones water bottles are made of, lose their qualities when recycled back into the very same product. For this reason, plastic is recycled into a number of different items.
What Plastic Bottles Are Recycled Into:
Most U.S. plastic bottles are recycled into polyester fiber for use in t-shirts, carpet, and fill for sleeping bags. It’s estimated that 50% of all polyester carpet is made from recycled plastic bottles. Other uses of used bottles are plastic stretch film and containers.
Products that can be made from plastic:
• furniture
• tote bags
• plastic lumber
• car parts
• flower pots
• playground equipment
SOURCE: Recycle Works
