Plastic bottles can be converted into many different products. Think of all the plastic toys, tools, electronics and other plastic items in your own home.

Plastic collected from your homes, businesses and local recycling centers is sent to Material Recovery Facility (MRF), which separates plastic and non-plastic, and/or Plastic Recovery Facility (PRF), which sorts plastic by type. .

These facilities use identification equipment, such as an optical sorter or manual sorter, to distinguish between different types of plastics.

The plastic goes to a reprocessor and is then melted down and extruded into new recycled plastic pellets. These pellets are sold to producers to manufacture new products.

– For every ton of plastic recycled, 7,4 cubic meters of landfill space is saved. Plastic recycling also reduces the amount of non-renewable energy used in the plastic manufacturing process, as creating new items from existing plastic uses significantly less energy than creating plastics from raw materials.

– Recycling reduces the pollution that can come from the chemicals used to make these bottles. It also helps to reduce the amount of garbage thrown into landfills, so that our garbage does not take up as much space.

- Recycling also creates jobs for people who collect recyclable materials and work at sites that transform them into new materials.

The most commonly recycled plastics are: 
– Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) – plastic water bottles and trays
– High-density polyethylene (HDPE) – milk cartons and shampoo bottles
– Polypropylene (PP) – margarine pots and ready-to-eat trays
– Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) – plumbing and piping
– Low Density Polyethylene (LDPE) – food and shopping bags
– Polystyrene (PS) – plastic cutlery

Each time plastic is recycled, the polymer chain gets shorter and therefore its quality decreases. The same piece of plastic can only be recycled 2-3 times.