Issue link: http://viewer.e-digitaleditions.com/i/54710
You may not know this, but not all plastics are the same. In fact, there are many grades of plastics. For example, plastics with number 1 and 2 recycling symbols are high quality plastic and happen to be great candidates for recycling. The recycling symbol looks like this: For example, most soft drink bottles have a number 1 recycling symbol because they are made out of PET (not like Rover or Fluffy, it stands for polyethylene terephthalate). PET can be melted down and made into new bottles, or something random like strapping tape for packages. Plastics that are marked with numbers from 3 to 8 are not good for recycling and should not be put in with your other materials to recycle. What happens if you mix the grades of plastic? Well, many low quality plastics could cause the high quality plastics to become contaminated, which is why they are sorted at the recycling centre. • More than 100 million water bottles are used each year around the world. • On average, one person uses 168 plastic water bottles per year. • One in five bottles of water is not recycled. • Each bottle can take up to 500 years to start to decompose. • Every second of the day, about 1,500 bottles end up in landfills and the ocean. • E-waste is short for electronic or electrical waste. It is everything from a TV remote control or phone, to a laptop or MP3 player. • 80,000 tonnes of electronic and electrical waste are disposed of into landfills in New Zealand per year. • A quarter of that number are televisions and computers – that's the same as about 2,500 elephants! • There's an annual e-waste collection day, where you can drop off your phones, laptops, TVs, and anything else electrical that can't be fixed. Find out more on www.eday.org.nz. Powerful magnets are used by professional recyclers to sort through different types of metals. www.upstartmag.co.nz 21