Plastic Types
Type 1: |
Soda and Water Containers, Cooking Oil Bottles, Peanut Butter Jars, Waterproof Packaging |
Type 2: |
Milk Jugs, Detergents, Oil Bottles, Toys and Plastic Bags |
Type 3: |
Food Wrap, Vegetable Oil Bottles, Blister Packages, Plastic Pipes, Outdoor Furniture, Shrink Wrap, Water Bottles, Salad Dressing and Liquid Detergent Containers |
Type 4: |
Many Plastic Bags, Shrink Wrap, Garment Bags, Dry Cleaning Bags, Produce Bags, Trash Can Liners, Food Storage Containers |
Type 5: |
Refrigerated Containers, Bags, Bottle Tops, Carpets, Food Wrap, Bottle Caps, Drinking Straws |
Type 6: |
Throwaway Utensils, Meat Packing, Protective Packing, Packaging Pellets or "Styrofoam Peanuts", Cups, Plastic Tableware, Meat Trays, To-Go Containers |
Type 7: |
No recycling potential; must be landfilled. Food Containers and Tupperware |
These are all manufactured using different process and cannot be mixed together and recycled. So for example, if one shampoo bottle is included with a load of soda bottles, it would contaminate the whole load and make it unrecyclable.
Type 1 and 2 are commonly recycled Type 4 is less commonly recycled. The other types are generally not recycled, except perhaps in small test programs. Common plastics polycarbonate (PC) and acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) do not have recycling numbers.
The code must be molded into the plastic item. The symbol should be easily visible for sorting purposes. The best symbols are large with a different surface finish than the surrounding plastic. If the container has a matte surface (rough), then the symbol should be smooth, a smooth container should have a rough recycling symbol.
Understand that plastic recycling is really in infancy. The process is messy and inefficient. Numerous problems exist. For example plastic from a "blow mould" (the neck of the bottle is narrower than the body) has a slightly different structure from the exact same plastic used in an "injection mould" (where the opening is the widest part of the product). Because of low processing temperatures plastic is highly vulnerable to contamination by food, labels and different plastics.
However even though most plastics are technically recyclable, the recycling infrastructure for plastics is in its infancy. Less than 3 percent of the 200,000 Metric Tons of plastic produced nationwide in the United States every year are actually recycled. And although plastics made up of a minute percentage of the waste stream in the 1960's, by the year 1992, plastics occupied more than 20% of landfill space nationwide. This percentage is continuing to grow, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that a quarter of our garbage in the United States of America will be by plastic by the turn of the century.
The plastics industry is one of the largest manufacturing industries in the United States, accounting for more than $310 billion dollars in annual shipments. The industry directly employs more than 1.4 million people. Plastics play an indispensable role in a wide variety of markets, ranging from packaging and building/construction to transportation; consumer and institutional products; furniture and furnishings; electrical/electronic components; adhesives, inks and coatings and others.
Plastics are used in the following major industries : Aerospace, Building and Construction, Electronics, Packaging and Transportation.
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