"Most people believe that plastics can be infinitely recycled – creating new products of a value to equal the old bottles or other plastics which they dutifully put into recycling containers to be collected. The cold hard fact is that there is no such thing as recycling plastic, because it is not a closed loop. None of the soda and milk bottles which are collected from your curbside are used to make new soda or milk bottles, because each time the plastic is heated it degenerates, so the subsequent iteration of the polymer is degraded and can’t meet food quality standards for soda and milk bottles. The plastic must be used to make lower quality products. The cycle goes something like this:
Virgin PET can be made into soda or milk bottles,which are collected and recycled into resins which are appropriate to make into toys, carpet, filler for pillows, CD cases, plastic lumber products, fibers or a million other products. But not new soda or milk bottles.
These second generation plastics can then be recycled a second time into park benches, carpet, speed bumps or other products with very low value.
The cycle is completed when the plastic is no longer stable enough to be used for any product, so it is sent to the landfill"
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