Finally - You Can Recycle PET #5
As
of January 2009, we were told that we could no longer recycle
any plastics that were PET #5 or PET #6. All of
a sudden, I was left with a giant bag of yogurt, sour cream
and butter containers. Frustrated by the lack of options, I
started
to make my own yogurt, but I inevitably had some containers
every week that were one of the taboo plastics. However, there
is good news on the PET #5 recycling front!
Preserve,
a recycling company, has take a giant eco-step
in an earth-friendly direction, and has started a nationwide program
to collect the PET #5 plastics.
Preserve Gimme 5 promotes and enables recycling of
#5 plastics like yogurt cups, hummus tubs and other food containers.
Products packaged in #5 plastic are sold widely, but #5 is not
recycled in most communities. By recycling your #5 plastic through
the Gimme 5 program, you are saving plastic from being sent to
landfills, keeping the plastic local by recycling it here in the
USA, and you are powering Preserve by helping us transform your
recyclables into new Preserve products.
Preserve Gimme 5 accepts the following for recycling:
• Clean
plastic with a #5 stamp in it.
• Preserve products
• Brita pitcher water filters
You have two ways to Gimme 5:
Drop your #5s at a Preserve Gimme 5 bin (available in select Whole
Foods Market stores).
Click here for a list of locations.
If you don’t
live near a Preserve Gimme 5 location, you can send them your
#5s.
Before starting the mail-back Gimme 5 program, we wanted to make
sure that we were taking a positive step for the environment. We
produced a single factor Life Cycle Assessment to analyze the impact
of the Gimme 5 program. The results showed the benefits of keeping
#5 plastics out of landfills and remaking them into new products
outweigh the environmental impacts of shipping them back to us.
We hope that the success of our program will help convince local
recyclers of the value of taking #5 plastics back in more communities
across the US.
For more information on this program, please click here.