Around the world people are recycling plastic bottles. Find places to recycle plastic bottles at RecyclerFinder.com
If you look in your cupboards and in your refrigerator, you’ll find any number of plastic bottles. While many of plastic bottles end up in landfills, these plastic bottles can be recycled over and over again into useful products.
Before you recycle your plastic bottles, be sure to separate the caps from the bottles as these are of a different plastic. Wash them out and remove labels if so required by local regulations before sending them to be recycled.
The bottles are collected and hauled to a plant set up for recycling. If you turn over your bottles, you’ll find numbers and/or icons on the bottom. These identification codes designate different polymer types of material. Two identification codes used on the bottom of plastic bottles are the numbers “1” and “2”. Polyethylene terephthalate will show a “1,” while high-density polyethylene will show a “2” on the bottom of the bottle. Once the bottles are inside the recycling plant, they are sorted out in accordance with their type of polymer material.
After the bottles have been organized according to type of their material, they are once more organized according to color. Similar bottles are then crushed and compacted by huge machines that mold them into bales. These bales are sold to business that specialize in processing the bottles into flakes for the next step in the process.
Polyester fibers are created from bottles with a “1” designation. These become fabrics for clothing, carpet and new bottles. Milk cartons, grocery bags and things like handy, usable bins are created from bottles with a “2” designation.
Unlike glass bottles, plastic bottles are popular because they don’t break when dropped. Unfortunately, they also don’t disintegrate in landfills. However, these bottles can be recycled over and over to provide new products from the old.
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