How to Recycle Plastic

Video Transcript

"Okay, I got three words for ya' kid, and listen up cause' they're important words, all right? Recycle your plastics, plastics, plastics, plastics, plastics, plastics, plastics. Yeah, you might have known I put a little bit of emphasis on that word plastics. I bet you caught that one. Well, that's because I want to put a little emphasis on plastics here. First of all, we're sending about nine percent of what goes to the landfills is plastics. Our recycling rate for plastics in this country is abysmal. Only five percent of the plastics we use is being recycled. Well, guess what? I think we can all do a better job. First of all, check your local websites, find out in your community what types of plastics are recyclable and recycle them. And then, the other thing we can do is most importantly too, is to keep plastic out of the environment. Any plastic that ends up as litter in our streets will end up typically in the storm drain. From there it will get carried out to our waterways, end up in the ocean. And plastic is so harmful on our environment. For some reason animals eat bits of plastic because it mimics a lot of their food sources, and it makes them sick or it it makes them starve, fills up their their stomach with all kinds of plastic material so they can't eat other materials, so it's a real harmful. They've actually found albatrosses in the Pacific atolls where their entire stomachs are filled with plastic lids, and they can't eat food and they die; the chicks, because they think it's a food source. So, if you throw a a lid from, a plastic lid from a bottle into the ground and it ends up in the storm drain there's a chance that could help kill a bird. Even hundred year old turtles out in the ocean have been found to eat plastic bags because they think they're jellyfish. So please, to help the environment make sure that your plastic does not end up as litter in the environment. If it's not recyclable throw it into the trash container. If you'd like to find more ways to help live a little more gently on the earth check out the website for the California Environmental Protection Agency."