VIDEO: What Happens to Plastic Water Bottles?

by 06/01/11 4 Comments

What happens after you put a plastic bottle into the recycling bin?

Check out the tour of Marglen Industries in Rome, Ga., one of the largest and most sophisticated PET recycling facilities in the United States, using solar energy to help convert 2.5 billion empty bottles each year into many useful products. This video demonstrates the value, importance and practicality of recycling.

“In the video a Marglen spokesman says one of the biggest issues his recycling businesses faces is not having enough empty bottles to feed their facility,” says Tom Lauria, Vice President of Communication for the IBWA, in a press release. “U.S. recycling rates are still too low. This video is a clear message to consumers and municipalities that more needs to be done to capture this valuable material to feed recycled material processing centers rather than feeding landfills…”

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Editor’s Note: Earth911 partners with many industries, manufacturers and organizations to support its Recycling Directory, the largest in the nation, which is provided to consumers at no cost. IBWA is one of these partners.

Megan Dobransky

Megan Dobransky

Megan Dobransky is the former National Partnership Manager at Earth911.com. You can follow her on Twitter @do_bran_sky.


  1. Brenni Larson

    posted on June 28th, 2011 at 1:43 am

    Do your part...Recycle!
As of June 17th 2011 we have upgraded our comment system to use Facebook comments. The below comments are closed and are listed for historical purposes.

3 Archived Comments

  1. Susan

    posted on June 6th, 2011 at 3:40 pm

    Fascinating! I was worried that recycling all that plastic would create more waste than it saved. I have a beautiful mat that is woven from different color plastic strands and a comfortable anorak made from recycled plastic bottles and it looks like gray wool but is soft and not scratchy.

  2. Sasha

    posted on June 7th, 2011 at 9:20 pm

    It is really great! But still loads of energy and water are needed to recycle the bottles. So, I hope that once we all will come to the end of using plastic bottles and bags at all.

    Many thanks, very interesting!

  3. Luke

    posted on June 8th, 2011 at 10:17 am

    I only hear the background music and not the host when she is speaking. Anyone else having this problem?

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