Recycling Plastic

Every year, we produce enough plastic film to shrink wrap Texas!

The United States uses enough water bottles to wrap around the Earth 190 times. The United states discards 38 billion water bottles annually.

There are 5 rotating "plastic gyres". These gyres cover over 40% of the ocean surface. When plastic enters the ocean, eventually they congregate in these gyres. These gyres are literally giant soups of plastic! As a result, 1.5 Million marine animals are killed every year by injesting plastic or being entrapped by plastic.

Plastics are all different, in terms of shapes, colors, and even types. Not all plastics can be recycled. It depends on their RIC or resin identification code.

Plastics can have a RIC of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or 7.

#1,2: Widely accepted

#4,5: Less commonly accepted

#3,6,7: Almost never accepted

How to find the RIC:

(1) Turn the plastic over

(2) On the bottom, there should be something like the recycling sign (3 arrows pointing to each other in a triangle format) with a number inside

(3) This is the RIC