Saturday, April 28, 2007

The Most Wicked of All Resins...

After reading the chapter in Royte's book about plastic recycling, along with Jennifer's reply to my "yogurt lid" post, I begin to wonder what types of plastic were being used to manufacture the majority of the plastic products I used in my house. Mainly, I wanted to know more about what sorts of items were made out of the various types of plastic (#'s 1-7) and I also wanted to see if any of the manufacturers had any misleading labels on their un-recyclable products. So thus I kept an eye out for various plastics around my house and workplace for a few weeks in order to see what I could find out. Here's a list of the various sorts of information I collected:
1- Here I found pretty much any botttled water, juice, or soda (water: sam's choice, dasani, kroger, enon springs, ice mountain, aquafina, nestle pure life, fiji, Juice/tea: minute maid, lipton iced tea, Soda: sunkist, sprite, fanta, coke, sierra mist, gatorade, pepsi) and also any sort of common household cleaners (orange glo, windex, lysol) and a few other various food containers (heinz ketchup)
2- kroger grocery sacks, milk jugs, kroger yogurt smoothie, any anti-bac hand wipes container, cacique-drink up- Yonique yogurt, baby powder, 7-11 slurpee cup, the actual recycling bins and most trash cans themselves, lotion, coffee creamers, shampoo and conditioner bottles
3- I couldn't find any!
4- elmer's glue bottle
5- subway cup, food storage containers, ziploc microwave bowls, rubbermaid
6- dannon activia yogurt, client's medicine cups, 7-11 super big gulp cup, some trash cans, styrafoam cups, wendy's cup, plastic utensils,
7- "white out" correction tape, welch's orange pineapple juice bottle

I found absolutely nothing at all on many various wrappers, most of them were the snack sized food portions (any bread, candy in general, cheeses, granola bars, little debbie/hostess )

Then, after reading some of the non-conventional messages on various packages, I began to wonder what other sorts of interesting labels I would encounter on products outside the realms of plastic. The messages varied quite a bit from some that were very environmentally friendly, to some that were not so friendly. Here is a list of some of my more intriguiging "finds" on the "non-plastic" packages:
◦ Glade air freshener spray: "you can recycle this steel container in an increasing number of communities. Call 800-558-5252 for recycling information. It also had "contains no CFCs which deplete the ozone layer"
◦ Air Wick: "contains no CFCs which deplete the ozone layer" and "please recycle when empty"
◦ Pringles: "canister contains at least 50% recycled material, 15% post-consumer content. For more info call 1-800-568-4035"
◦ Eclipse gum: read "do your part" next to a little symbol of a stick figure throwing away trash into a canister
◦ Sam's choice root beer can "recyclable aluminum container if facilities exist in your area
◦ Kroger mac and cheese box: "carton made from 100% recycled paperboard, minimum 35% post-consumer content"
◦ Papa john's pizza box: "corrugated recycles"
◦ Comet: "package contains at least 75% recycled material(minimum 50% post-consumer), the surfactants in this product are biodegradable, contains no phosphate"

Lastly, I just wanted to list this website:
http://www.wasteonline.org.uk/resources/InformationSheets/Plastics.htm

It is a concise, informative (and visually-pleasing) website mainly about recycling plastic. I liked it a lot because it isn't overwhelming with too much information and gets to the point quickly.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Mary looks like you see the recycling symbol everywhere too. I alway tell bill where I find a recycling symbol on thing. So odd things I can think of is our large trash can-2, fisher-price plastic wagon-2, my cups and bowls mostly-5. Something that shocks me I read my shampoo bottle in the shower the other day and it said " this bottled is coded for recycling" this made me think of something. That companys are taking there time to change molds and ink printing on their products to help save the enviroment but yet there is no place that every resident has to recycle those products. I dfo believe that the reason we see so many symbols on everything is because I believe I remember some law that was past to help trash and landfills. I am not sure if I remember it right but that would be cool to find out if there was a law or what it really does say. By the way that statement I will be writing to my commissioners and the gov of mich