Sedona Recycles News Archive

July 11, 2008

Sedona Recycles, Inc., is proud to announce that plastics #1-7 will now be accepted at all its recycling locations. Plastic items that are now accepted include: yogurt/cottage cheese tubs and lids, meat and produce polystyrene trays, fruit and vegetable clamshell containers, condiment containers, to-go containers, drinking cups, nursery pots, kitchen storage containers, prescription bottles, frozen meal trays, newspaper delivery bags, CD and cassette tape cases, and any other plastic with a number. SRI will not accept plastics without numbers such as film-plastic packaging and block Styrofoam packaging. Additionally, plastic grocery bags should still be taken to local grocery stores for recycling.

Until now, SRI accepted only bottle-shaped plastics #1 and #2, due to the lack of a reliable market for other plastics. While recycling of #1 and #2 plastics was better than nothing, these items comprise only a fraction of the plastics that consumers encounter in the marketplace.

What is the difference between these plastics?

Beverage containers and other containers with bottlenecks are "blow-molded," whereas other container shapes are "injection-molded." In addition to these differences in processing, the additives used in manufacturing prevent the mixing of plastics during recycling. In order to distinguish between plastics, manufacturers adopted a system of differentiation using resin codes. These codes, numbers that can be found inside the chasing arrows symbol on most plastic items, denote the type of plastic resin used in manufacturing.

Over the past two weeks, SRI conducted a pilot program to determine the quality of #3-7 plastics received. After receiving approval from Super Link Plastic, Inc., the buyer of all plastics from SRI, Sedona Recycles decided to begin accepting all numbered plastics. The decision was not an easy one to make. Plastic is much more difficult to recycle than aluminum, glass, or paper, and can typically be recycled only once before heading to a landfill or becoming an end-use product such as polyfleece clothing, carpet, plastic lumber, or toys. So should we still recycle plastic? Absolutely! It is nearly impossible to avoid these plastics altogether, so it is best to act as a responsible consumer and avoid products that are excessively or unnecessarily packaged and recycle the rest!