How should you recycle plastics? It’s a bit complicated but in this article we’ve tried to make it easy for you.<\/span><\/p>\n The first priorities should be refuse, reduce and reuse, but recycling also plays an important role<\/strong> in reducing pollution and laying the foundation for a more sustainable world<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n Simply recycling plastics does not make up for the environmental damage done when the resource is extracted, the the plastic manufactured and the final product is transported to the consumer. Read more about plastic vs glass vs other beverage containers<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Therefore we should all try to minimise the amount of plastics we use. For example use resealable glass containers to store and heat food, a stainless “to-go” coffee cup instead of single-use plastics, and for water bottles a high quality reusable bottle<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n But reducing plastic to zero is almost impossible. <\/span><\/p>\n Here’s a guide for you on the best and worst materials and how to recycle plastics.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n These plastic can generally not be recycled and should therefore be avoided.<\/p>\n These plastics are easier to recycle and should therefore be preferred:<\/p>\n All of the above are theoretically recyclable with plastic except PLA. Unfortunately few end up being effectively recycled since generally plastic recipients are made up of a mix of plastics of different densities. The mixed plastics make them complicated and more costly to repurpose. In many cities, recycling plants don’t even have the machines that are necessary to recycle all the different types of plastic that we throw in the recycling containers. Therefore they specialize and only handle the one or two most common ones and easier to recycle (i.e. PET).<\/p>\n If you want lo learn more about how to identify the type of plastic a\u00a0water bottle has been made of, the potential chemicals that it could be leaching to the water and how to recycle it, check out this article.<\/a><\/p>\nWhy recycling plastics is not enough?<\/h2>\n
So how does plastic recycling work?<\/h2>\n
The main plastics to avoid<\/h3>\n
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Safer plastics to use<\/h3>\n
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Another way of categorising plastics<\/h3>\n
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