Not easy to find it, is it? Yet magically, you the consumer, are supposed to figure out if the product you are buying does get recycled by your municipality while at the same time buying what is within your budget, as most of this packaging is in food and personal care products.
See, some of those numbers represent plastics that cannot be discarded in your recycle bin and were intended for the waste disposal companies as a means to separate common looking plastics. Codes 1 and 2 are, generally, accepted as fully recyclable while 3 to 7 are more difficult or not at all recyclable.
-
And since the U.S. only recycles a sad, sad 5% of all plastics, you know most of what you put in that bin is going to a landfill or the ocean.
As a side note here, glass, cardboard and aluminum are recycled at rates starting at 40% and upwards. So yes, 5% for plastic recycling is really pathetic especially considering plastic’s absolute longevity in our ecosystem.
There is a dizzying amount of information out there about these plastic recycling codes and to be honest, some of it contradicts itself, especially when the messenger is a plastics lobbying organization. We saw in California what our single use plastic ban yielded—thicker plastic bags. This was due to the money and efforts of the American Progressive (lol) Bag Alliance, a lobbying group for American plastic bag manufacturers.
We have gone through a great many sources to find you the best information about each code below.
