Plastic Facts

1.The NIU 3R Program accepts plastics coded 1 or 2. Please check your container to see if it is in the appropriate category. If you do not know, please recycle it. Waste Management, Inc. will sort the plastics before processing them.

2.Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) - 23% of all plastic bottles. This type is also used to package boil-in-bag foods, meat, cosmetics, and carbonated soft drinks.

3.High-density polyethylene (HDPE) is used to make 62% of all plastic bottles, most commonly containing milk, detergents, shampoos, pharmaceuticals, juices, bottled water and antifreeze.

4.In 1987, the U.S. used almost 1 billion barrels of oil, just to make plastics.

5. When buried, some plastic material may last for 700 years. (Manufacturers add inhibitors that resist the decomposition process necessary to break down the plastic.)

6. Over 46,000 pieces of plastic debris float on every square mile of ocean.

7.Although polystyrene foam (commonly known as Styrofoam) is completely non-biodegradable, it is recyclable. If you lined up all the polystyrene foam cups made in just one day, they would circle the earth.

8.According to Dr. Miligram, a plastics analyst, "Recycling plastics saves twice as much energy as burning them."

9.Americans use 4 million plastic bottles every hour!-Yet only 1 bottle out of 4 is recycled.

10.Americans make enough low-density polyethylene (LDPE) plastic every year to shrink-wrap the state of Texas. Most of it ends up in landfills.

• Plastics are part of the waste stream: although they account for only 8% of the waste by weight, they occupy about 20% of the volume in a landfill due to their low bulk density.
• In 1988 we used 2 billion pounds of HDPE just to make bottles for household products. That's about the weight of 900,000 Honda Civics.
• Since the introduction of PET containers in the late 1970's, the industry has reduced the weight of PET in 2-liter bottles from 67 grams on average to about 48 grams; a 28% reduction.
• It takes 5 recycled two-liter bottles to make enough fiberfill for one ski jacket.
• It takes 1,050 recycled milk jugs to make a 6-foot plastic park bench.
• About nine billion plastic bottles are produced annually in the U.S. about two-thirds of which end up in landfills or incinerators. Most of the rest go to Wellman Inc. a recycling facility in South Carolina. Wellman annually recycled about 2.4 billion plastic bottles into a polyester fiber known as Fortrel EcoSpun, which ends up in active wear.