Plastic Bottles
What do these things have in common: a yo-yo, a kayak, a fleece pullover, and your school lunch tray? They can all be made from recycled plastic bottles or containers. In fact, the bottle you recycle in your own town can end up being spun into a pair of mittens worn by a child who lives in Japan.
The plastic containers you recycle can take quite a journey once they leave your house. Of course, they can also wind up being put to the same use as before. We're going to explore some unique paths you may not know about.
Plastic recycling began in communities in the early 1980s with bottle-deposit programs. Buyers got a small refund when they returned their empty plastic bottles. Recycling's popularity surged a decade later, when officials became increasingly worried that garbage landfills were filling up. They urged companies to use recycled materials. Now, according to the American Plastics Council (APC), 80 percent of Americans - nearly 200 million people - have access to curbside or drop-off plastic recycling.
Here's how the recycling process begins: People put used bottles, jugs, and containers in a bin for curbside collection. (Or they bring them to a local recycling center.) Trucks haul them to a recycling facility, where the plastic is sorted. Ketchup bottles and yogurt containers, for instance, are made of PP (polypropylene). They are chemically different from detergent bottles and milk jugs (made of HDPE, or high-density polyethylene) and from soda bottles (made of PET or PETE, polyethylene teraphthalate).
Each type of plastic is squished into a huge bale for shipping. Each bale weighs from 800 to 1,200 pounds and could contain 6,400 to 7,200 soda bottles, says Judith Dunbar, manager of recycling at the APC.
Bales of plastic are sold to reclaimers by the truckload, or about 40 bales. Reclaimers are companies that help process recycled plastic. At the reclaimers, bales are torn apart by a machine called a bale breaker, which rakes the plastic onto a
The plastic containers you recycle can take quite a journey once they leave your house. Of course, they can also wind up being put to the same use as before. We're going to explore some unique paths you may not know about.
Plastic recycling began in communities in the early 1980s with bottle-deposit programs. Buyers got a small refund when they returned their empty plastic bottles. Recycling's popularity surged a decade later, when officials became increasingly worried that garbage landfills were filling up. They urged companies to use recycled materials. Now, according to the American Plastics Council (APC), 80 percent of Americans - nearly 200 million people - have access to curbside or drop-off plastic recycling.
Here's how the recycling process begins: People put used bottles, jugs, and containers in a bin for curbside collection. (Or they bring them to a local recycling center.) Trucks haul them to a recycling facility, where the plastic is sorted. Ketchup bottles and yogurt containers, for instance, are made of PP (polypropylene). They are chemically different from detergent bottles and milk jugs (made of HDPE, or high-density polyethylene) and from soda bottles (made of PET or PETE, polyethylene teraphthalate).
Each type of plastic is squished into a huge bale for shipping. Each bale weighs from 800 to 1,200 pounds and could contain 6,400 to 7,200 soda bottles, says Judith Dunbar, manager of recycling at the APC.
Bales of plastic are sold to reclaimers by the truckload, or about 40 bales. Reclaimers are companies that help process recycled plastic. At the reclaimers, bales are torn apart by a machine called a bale breaker, which rakes the plastic onto a