Misunderstanding of Recycling Vol.2
Have you ever heard of wishcycling ?
The majority of people are careless about what will happen after putting plastics into this magical “Whatever You Think They Can Recycle” bin, and that thought is called wishcycling. People throw strollers, rugs, propane tanks, stuffies and other junk into recycling bins. Once your trash is out of your site, people tend to put the responsibility on someone else because they don’t care or don’t want to know what will happen after they throw it away. But slightly wishing it will get recycled somehow so we are doing something good for the planet.
A bigger scale of wishcycling was happening countrywide. America and other countries used to send dirty contaminated “recycling” trash to China and other parts of Asia. Recyclable materials were often too dirty to recycle and it required too much labor in order to recycle those materials. Sometimes, dirty diapers were in those recycling containers.
In 2018, China stopped accepting the recycling materials and soon after that other Asian countries also declined importing plastic… trash. These plastics had nowhere to go. The shipping containers full of dirty plastics (and diapers) were sitting in seaports of either the countries who sent them or countries who declined them. The containers had nowhere to go, and nobody wanted them.
In most of the US, most types of plastic are not recyclable. Like I wrote on Vol.1, there are seven types of plastics which you can categorize in types. Most of the time, only two kinds of plastics get recycled which are: 1 - PETE and 2 - HDPE. And the rest, which are categorized as “mix plastic” are most likely thrown in the landfill.
Check below to see the Resin Identification Code and take a look around the house to see if you can categorize the plastics. Even though we cannot 100% avoid plastics in our life, we can at least get to know what can be recycled or not. The best solution to protect Earth is just avoid using plastics as much as possible and tell your friends what you learned!
7 Common Types of Plastics / Resin Identification Code
1. PETE – Polyethylene Terephthalate
Water bottles, food packaging, mouthwash bottles etc… and easy to recycle IF clean.
2. HDPE – High-Density Polyethylene
Shampoo bottles, grocery bags, milk jugs, non-carbonated drink bottles… and easy to recycle IF it’s clean
3. PVC – Polyvinyl Chloride
Laminate flooring, plastic food wrap, that yellow ducky, shoes… Since these are highly toxic materials and contain many chemicals, these are very difficult materials to recycle.
4. LDPE – Low Density Polyethylene
Grocery bags, toothpaste tubes, frozen food packaging, bread bags... These often won’t get recycled because they have a tendency to tangle in recycling machinery and take away workers’ time and may cause damage to the machines. Very difficult to recycle.
5. PP – Polypropylene
Products that are resistant to heat such as reusable food containers, yogurt containers, straws etc…The additives used in plastic products may contain toxins such as cadmium and lead and are very difficult to recycle.
6. PS – Polystyrene (Known as Styrofoam)
Food packaging, hot drink cups, disposable plates and breaks very easily. Because it is light weight and takes space, it’s very expensive to transport, handle, and process. It is very very difficult to recycle.
7. Other Plastics
Plastics that have been mixed with other chemicals. Eye protection for sunglasses, sport and safety goggles, CD, DVDs, baby bottles. These rest of the complicated plastics, these don’t get recycled.