Breaking Down The Secret Code

Flip over your favorite beverage container, potato chip dispenser or other plastic product and what do you see? On most of these plastics, there is a little triangle made up of the chasing-arrow symbol. Unlike other recyclables (like paper), chasing-arrow symbols on plastics also have a number in them.

This number is “the code,” the plastic resin code of plastics. To assist with plastics recycling, The Society of the Plastics Industry devised this plastic resin code, providing a number from #1-#7 on these containers. The code tells what type of resin each plastic is made of.

The easiest plastics to recycle are also the most common. They are:

• #1 (Polyethylene Terephthalate or PETE): commonly seen as plastic water bottles and two-liter soda bottles
• #2 (High Density Polyethylene or HDPE): commonly seen as plastic milk jugs and detergent bottles

Many curbside recycling programs take both PETE and HDPE plastics because they have the largest market for reprocessing into new materials.

The different resins make contamination a huge issue with plastic recycling. Mixing different resins in recycling makes them lose their special properties and become a gooey mess.

You could probably recognize a plastic bottle or milk jug, but what if it was sorted with yogurt cups, plastic bags and thousands of other mixed plastics? It would take a long time to read all the little triangles to find the #1s and #2s.

Other plastics (#3-7) are recyclable, but sorting and processing them poses other challenges. For example, #3 plastic (Polyvinyl Chloride or PVC) creates chlorine gas in the recycling process, which is harmful to human health.

Here’s three easy ways to optimize your plastic recycling:

1. Know and share “the code”
2. Check for more easily recycled packaging (#1 and #2 plastic) when you’re shopping
3. Search by number using Earth 911’s recycling locator to find nearby locations/events that accept this plastic