By the Numbers: Plastics in Your Home

by Andrea Millar — May 18, 2008

Discovery.com brainchild PlanetGreen has a cool story on the hidden meanings of all the little numbers on the underside of your plastics (hint: it's not the words to a love song). I try pretty assiduously in my household to keep plastics out as much as I can, but sometimes I'm halfway into a bottle of Cranberry juice before I consider the fact of where it's going.

I'm lucky to live in a place with a very supportive recycling program; they'll take most of the ones on the list. Between saving the plastics from the trash and holding onto the glass bottles, we walk away about 10 bucks richer and produce maybe one bag of trash every 2 weeks. For seven people. Rounding up those pesky plastics can make a huge impact on your lifestyle and the garbage heap. Knowing your phthalates from your HDPE will help you keep chemicals out of your living spaces, and your body too. As a bonus, the article also features a heads-up for the emerging bioplastics field. These babies aren't recyclable, but they do compost under the right conditions.

That reminds me, fellow plastic-chasers, since plastics are made with petroleum, are we about to see a plastics spike to parallel that in food and gas? Hopefully, keeping it green and chemical free is enough motivation to give Americans more time with little numbers.