Can you recycle plastic? It depends. If by recycling you mean, can some new product be made from plastic, the answer is a resounding yes. Disposable plastic has, or ought to have, a recycling symbol enclosing a number from 1 to 7. Some manufacturing company is making new products from every one of them.
On the other hand, if the question means can consumers put plastic out for recycling, the answer, unfortunately, is probably not. Curbside recycling programs hardly ever accept every kind of plastic. Here are the seven kinds of plastic, along with one common product made from each:
- PET or PETE (polyethylene terephthalate) — bottles for soft drinks
- HDPE (high density polyethylene) — milk cartons
- Vinyl or PVC (polyvinyl chloride) — plastic pipes
- LDPE (low density polyethylene) — plastic shopping bags
- PP (polypropylene) — yogurt containers
- PS (polystyrene) — Styrofoam egg cartons
- Other, that is, everything that does not fit into one of the first six categories — I’ve seen “7″ on some hard, brittle containers, but it’s impossible to characterize this catch-all with a single familiar product.
Nearly all curbside recycling programs accept PET. Most also accept HDPE, although many of these accept it only in certain shapes. Only rarely do curbside programs accept anything else. Fortunately, most grocery stores now take back LDPE for recycling.
Municipalities are most likely to accept plastics besides PET and HDPE if a nearby company will buy it from them. PP, the other plastic most likely to be accepted, can be made into many other things. If you have a local Whole Foods, it will likely accept PP as well as LDPE.
Because of the current limitations of plastic recycling, most plastic, unfortunately, does not get recycled. Please do your part. Put out whatever you can for curbside recycling. Find out if you can take any of the rest someplace else, and then take it there. If nothing else, find a company on line that you can mail stuff to. And buy things made from recycled plastic to encourage more manufacturers. The more markets municipalities have, the more they will accept in their curbside recycling programs.
I read recently that many plastic manufacturers lobby against marijuana legalization because hemp can produce biodegradable plastics. It can also make paper. So for the sake of a few extra stoners walking around an an unpleasant smell once and a while, we choose instead to wreck our environment by polluting it with plastics and cutting down rainforests. Don’t you just love the human race?
I can think of all kinds of good reasons people have to be against legalizing marijuana, but this one really takes the cake. And yes, you have given an example of how the human race acts, not just lobbyists. We can be a pretty odd lot, can’t we? I’m glad God loves us even when we have trouble loving ourselves or each other!
Hemp can make all kinds of things besides mind-altering drugs. I have seen hemp fiber products advertised. I can’t remember if I have selected any for my Eco-Friendly Home Products, but as long as growing it is illegal in the US, they’ll have to be imports.