The Most Wicked of All Resins...

After reading the chapter in Royte's book about plastic recycling, along with Jennifer's reply to my "yogurt lid" post, I begin to wonder what types of plastic were being used to manufacture the majority of the plastic products I used in my house. Mainly, I wanted to know more about what sorts of items were made out of the various types of plastic (#'s 1-7) and I also wanted to see if any of the manufacturers had any misleading labels on their un-recyclable products. So thus I kept an eye out for various plastics around my house and workplace for a few weeks in order to see what I could find out. Here's a list of the various sorts of information I collected:
1- Here I found pretty much any botttled water, juice, or soda (water: sam's choice, dasani, kroger, enon springs, ice mountain, aquafina, nestle pure life, fiji, Juice/tea: minute maid, lipton iced tea, Soda: sunkist, sprite, fanta, coke, sierra mist, gatorade, pepsi) and also any sort of common household cleaners (orange glo, windex, lysol) and a few other various food containers (heinz ketchup)
2- kroger grocery sacks, milk jugs, kroger yogurt smoothie, any anti-bac hand wipes container, cacique-drink up- Yonique yogurt, baby powder, 7-11 slurpee cup, the actual recycling bins and most trash cans themselves, lotion, coffee creamers, shampoo and conditioner bottles
3- I couldn't find any!
4- elmer's glue bottle
5- subway cup, food storage containers, ziploc microwave bowls, rubbermaid
6- dannon activia yogurt, client's medicine cups, 7-11 super big gulp cup, some trash cans, styrafoam cups, wendy's cup, plastic utensils,
7- "white out" correction tape, welch's orange pineapple juice bottle

I found absolutely nothing at all on many various wrappers, most of them were the snack sized food portions (any bread, candy in general, cheeses, granola bars, little debbie/hostess )

Then, after reading some of the non-conventional messages on various packages, I began to wonder what other sorts of interesting labels I would encounter on products outside the realms of plastic. The messages varied quite a bit from some that were very environmentally friendly, to some that were not so friendly. Here is a list of some of my more intriguiging "finds" on the "non-plastic" packages:
◦ Glade air freshener spray: "you can recycle this steel container in an increasing number of communities. Call 800-558-5252 for recycling information. It also had "contains no CFCs which deplete the ozone layer"
◦ Air Wick: "contains no CFCs which deplete the ozone layer" and "please recycle when empty"
◦ Pringles: "canister contains at least 50% recycled material, 15% post-consumer content. For more info call 1-800-568-4035"
◦ Eclipse gum: read "do your part" next to a little symbol of a stick figure throwing away trash into a canister
◦ Sam's choice root beer can "recyclable aluminum container if facilities exist in your area
◦ Kroger mac and cheese box: "carton made from 100% recycled paperboard, minimum 35% post-consumer content"
◦ Papa john's pizza box: "corrugated recycles"
◦ Comet: "package contains at least 75% recycled material(minimum 50% post-consumer), the surfactants in this product are biodegradable, contains no phosphate"

Lastly, I just wanted to list this website:
http://www.wasteonline.org.uk/resources/InformationSheets/Plastics.htm

It is a concise, informative (and visually-pleasing) website mainly about recycling plastic. I liked it a lot because it isn't overwhelming with too much information and gets to the point quickly.