How to Identify and Recycle Plastics
Plastics are convenient to use, but they can be detrimental to the environment. Dumped in a landfill, they can take hundreds of years to disintegrate and pose entrapment and suffocation risks to wildlife. To make matters worse, most discarded plastic products are still perfectly good for use in some other form. Recycling plastic saves good material from being wasted, reduces the amount of resources used to produce new plastics and saves animals needless suffering. Learn how to identify and recycle plastics and improve the world one bottle at a time.
- Difficulty:
- Moderately Easy
Instructions
-
-
1
Check the plastic item and see what type of plastic it is. The Society of Plastics Industry has a system of seven numbers to make identifying the type of plastic easier. The number is usually found on the bottom of plastic containers inside or near the recycling logo of three arrows in a triangle. On plastic bags, it is usually found near the handles.
-
2
Contact your municipality or go to a web site such as Earth911.com to see which plastics are accepted for curbside recycling in your area. Many districts pick up plastic containers and bottles, such as 1, 2 and 5 for free on certain days of the week - if they are placed in front of the house in district-owned recycling bins. If you do not have a recycling bin, call your municipality and request one.
-
3
Find stores in your area with boxes for plastic bag recycling. Most blue and white plastic bags can be recycled by putting them into a plastic bag recycling box found outside many supermarkets and other stores. To locate one in your area, call local stores or visit PlasticBagRecycling.org and click "Consumers" to find drop-off locations in your state.
-
4
Recycle other plastic items such as used ink cartridges and cell phones at specialized boxes often found at electronics and office supply stores and university campuses. To easily find recycling locations in you area, go to Earth911.com and enter the name of the plastic item and your ZIP code into the green box at the top of the screen.
-
1
Related Searches
References
Resources
- Photo Credit Sean Murphy/Lifesize/Getty Images
