Our friend Russell Klein, with whom we worked closely during his many years as Washington D.C.’s only municipal recycling educator, and who was also responsible for directing (and co-founding) the Material Resource Sustainability Internship (MRSI), has written a great piece to clear all the confusion about plastics recycling, especially for anyone who has tried to use those little numbers in a recycling symbol to guide their recycling efforts.
As Klein says in the title of his piece: “You’re doing it wrong. And so it everyone else.”
He explains that those little symbols you see at the bottom of plastic containers are “not indicative of Recyclability, Recycled content, Compatibility with other products of the same number, (or) Sustainable Greeny Goodness.”
Read his article here: Plastics Recycling: You’re Doing It Wrong. So Is Everyone Else.