Recycle - Plastics
Why Recycle Plastics?
- You can find recycled plastics in many products. Recycled HDPE is used for laundry detergent bottles, trash bins, plastic pipes, construction materials, and many other products. Recycled PET is used for cleaning product bottles, carpets, tool handles, auto parts, sleeping bag insulation, and jacket insulation.
- It takes 20 years for a plastic bag to decompose and 250 years for a plastic cup to decompose.
- Plastics contain additives such as colorants, stabilizers, and plasticizers which may contain toxic components such as cadmium and lead.
What You Can Do
Numerous recycling centers or landfills accept plastics (See Resources below), however, depending on where you live you may or may not have a safe and organized way to recycle plastic material, but there are other things you can do to help. Here are a few suggestions you can do in your community:
- Encourage community members to reduce the waste and recyclables they generate by buying products with less packaging, to buy in bulk, and reuse or share materials with others.
- Encourage community members to wash and reuse plastic food containers for storing food items instead of buying throwaway plastic bags and to look for products in reusable, refillable, or recyclable packaging when they shop.
- You could collect clean plastic grocery bags around your community and donate them back to your local grocery store.
- Encourage community members to reuse their plastic grocery bags instead of getting new ones every time they go to the store. Every time you reuse a plastic bag you double the environmental savings: you save the bag you reused from going to a landfill, and you save a new one from needing to be used.
- Encourage community members to use cloth bags when grocery shopping or better yet make the bags yourself and sell them donating the proceeds to your community or to a new recycling center.
- Educate community members on alternative uses for plastic grocery bags. For example they could be used to line wastebaskets instead of using larger trash bags, protect water and gas valves in the wintertime, keep dust away when storing off-season shoes, organize craft supplies, cushion breakable items when moving them in boxes, lunch bags, for cleaning up dog waste, or keeping clothing dry on boat trips.
- Work with your Tribal Council to ban plastic grocery bags all together in your community.
- Use plastic bottles or other plastic products
for craft projects. For example cutting off
the top of a plastic water bottle or soda bottle
would make great candle holders, using the bottom
half of a water bottle could be used as a bird feeder
or a vase. The middle part of the bottle
could be used to protect young plants from animals
and acts as a mini green house. For more ways to reuse plastic milk jugs, check out this site: http://www.plantea.com/milk-jug.htm
- You can also crochet rugs, placemats, and tote bags out of plastic bags check: www.thriftyfun.com/tf517076.tip.html or Make your own totes for easy instructions.
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