Anna Getty's Easy Green Organic - Anna Getty [11]
GLASS BOTTLES: Because of the purity of ingredients in glass, bottles have a quick turnaround in the recycling pipeline. Glass can be recycled indefinitely because there is no loss of purity or quality. The various colors of glass have no effect on its recycling capability. In fact, a typical glass container is made up of 70 percent recycled glass.
PLASTIC: Plastic is almost always petroleum based, meaning it comes from oil, a non-renewable resource. Nowadays so many kitchen items are made from plastic that I actually find it quite hard to go to the grocery store without buying something that is packaged in plastic, for example, yogurt containers, containers for berries, and bags for lettuces and chips. Since it is hard to avoid plastic, it’s especially important to recycle it.
One of my goals in my kitchen and household is to minimize my purchase of plastics altogether. I try to be really conscious about my plastic purchases because plastics are so bad for the environment. Producing plastics requires not only oil but a lot of energy. They are not biodegradable, and a lot of energy is used to recycle them. Hopefully there will be more biodegradable options widely available some day; I hear they are in the works.
what the symbols on plastic mean
Most plastic is marked with a number from one to seven called a resin code. The number lets you know what type of resin the plastic object is made from. If the number is inside a little triangle, you know the object is recyclable. Below are the resin codes and some common objects on which each number appears. It’s important to pay attention to these symbols because they can tell you how and where an object can be recycled. PET (1) and HDPE (2) are the most common forms of plastic, so they are the easiest to find recycling locations for.
1 PET (polyethylene terephthalate): soda bottles, oven-ready meal trays, and water bottles
2 HDPE (high-density polyethylene): milk bottles, detergent bottles, and grocery/ trash/retail bags
3 PVC (polyvinyl chloride): plastic food wrap, loose-leaf binders, and plastic pipes
4 LDPE (low-density polyethylene): dry cleaning bags, produce bags, and squeezable bottles
5 PP (polypropylene): medicine bottles, aerosol caps, and drinking straws
6 PS (polystyrene): compact disc jackets, Styrofoam peanuts, and plastic tableware
7 Other: reusable water bottles, certain kinds of food containers, and Tupperware
Note: Most recycling programs will not recycle any plastic with food on it. Be sure to rinse food containers before adding them to your recycling bin.
paper or plastic? choose cloth!
Consider minimizing or stopping all plastic bag usage, whether it’s buying plastic zip-top bags or taking plastic shopping bags from the grocery store. Plastic is a petroleum-based product that comes from oil, a nonrenewable resource. Many plastic bags are recyclable, but unfortunately most still wind up in landfills and will take hundreds to thousands of years to decompose.
Most paper products, including paper napkins, paper towels, and grocery store bags, are made from trees in virgin forests. Often called old-growth forests, they haven’t been previously disturbed by human activity. Many of these forests are in North America. The trees are precious to the environment because they release oxygen into the air and provide a habitat for wildlife. As consumers we can let the paper companies know we want paper made from recycled material. Food for thought: if every household in the United States replaced one roll of virgin tree paper towels with 100 percent recycled paper towels, we could save 1.4 million trees.
At the grocery store, at the mall, or in your home, try these options:
1. Use cloth or canvas bags for grocery shopping. Keep ten to twenty of them in your car to have on hand. There are even ones you can fold up and put in your purse in case you forget them in the car. I take my bags everywhere, even to the shoe store. It may be hard to remember them at first, but eventually you won’t want to use anything