Did you know this?...
When you're recycling plastic bottles (water bottles, for example), never leave the cap on the bottle itself.
Why?
According to Jessica Jenson of Low Impact Living:
They just chuck any bottles with lids on them".
Hmmmmm.... I did not know that.
The folks at the recycling plant simply won't take the time (or expend the energy) to take lids off of plastic bottles.
It makes sense when you think of all the millions of bottles they must receive... but still. That means you'd actually be wasting your time & effort spent recycling if you toss a water bottle into the "plastics" bin with the lid on it!
FYI, Jessica was the "green expert" who appeared on "Living With Ed" on HGTV last night. I liked the show. And I liked Jessica. (I just signed up for the Low Impact Living newsletter, too.)
Okay, the take-away here is:
Throw the lids in the trash, and recycle the plastic bottles alone.
I'm sure my friend, Jeffrey already knew this. But I obviously still have a lot to learn.
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Don't throw the lids in the trash, they can be recycled!
Why must the lids be removed from the bottles? All of the info that I have read says to remove them but doesn't say why or what happens if you don't.
I'm wondering - to keep animals from going through my recyclables, I saw on a TV show that you can put an "L" shaped slice in gallon jugs to stick the cat food cans in them. Do recycling plants just throw these away also?
I was wondering about the cap ring as well. I have noticed that the cap usually has a different material glued to the underside of the cap to seal the container. This material might not be recyclable even though the plastic is, so the ring might still be recyclable.
But what about the plastic ring under the cap that stays? Does that make a difference? As far as I can tell, it's the same plastic as the cap. HELP!
The three-arrows recycling symbol originated in the recycling community. However, it was later appropriated by the plastics industry to indicate plastic type, so that they can put a feel-good recycling symbol on all their products REGARDLESS OF whether it actually can be recycled. See Elizabeth Royte's book Garbage Land.
Only plastics 1 and 2 have a substantial resale value in most parts of the country. If your community burns garbage, plastic 6 (polystyrene, often in the form of styrofoam) can be used to raise temperatures in the incinerator, which results in more complete combustion and less carcinogenic pollution. Plastic 7 ("Other", which means "All sorts of junk that we can't classify") is totally worthless -- it ends up in the landfill with a detour through a recycling plant where it gets rejected. Toss it in the trash yourself and save some diesel fuel spent hauling it around.
More than recycling, you can contribute by NOT BUYING plastics that are not recyclable. Or better yet, reduce your consumption of plastics as much as possible. Closed-cycle plastic recycling is very rare, more often it gets "recycled" once into artificial fleece or astroturf, and then goes straight to a landfill after one cycle.
No - I won't give up! In fact, I have emailed my recycling center to ask about the lids. I will remove them from now on, but I am curious! And I learned that I can only recycle Plastics # 1 and 2. Wonder why?