Plastic Recycling Confusion
By David Leonhardt, Fri Dec 9th

CONSUMER ALERT: do not mix your food container lids. A yogurtcontainer lid is NOT the same as a margarine container lid, evenif they look the same. How do I know this? Well, here is mystory.

We live in a very hoity-toity county. Sure, it might look likejust farm country. A lot of the houses might seem a little worsefor wear. But we are very picky about what plastic we recycle.We recycle only those numbered 1 and 2.

In case you did not know, your plastics are numbered. On thebottom of most containers, there is a number, usually from 1 to5. I suppose 1 is the best, since anything with a number of 3 ormore just is not high-class enough for us to recycle.

Sooner or later, it was bound to happen. My overactive curiositygot the better of me and I emptied the fridge to try to figureout this plastic numbering thing. What else does one do in themiddle of the night when his newborn doesn't want to sleep?

My wife came down to the kitchen. "What on earth are you doing?"

"Just snacking," I replied.

She scanned the table, covered with yogurt, hand cream, creamcheese, plum sauce, juice, shampoo, and an empty ice creambucket. "OK, I'm not actually eating any of these," I admitted."I'm looking for numbers on the bottom to see which of thesecontainers is high-class enough for us to recycle."

"You are NOT recycling our brand new tub of margarine," my wifedeclared. "And that juice jug is supposed to last us a few moreyears."

"Of course," I said in my most believable comforting tone. "It'sjust a curiosity thing”.

"Oh, one of those," my wife sighed.

"You see, both the yogurt and margarine containers are made ofPP."

"PP?" my wife asked.

"Yes, PP. Plastic number 5, also called Polypropylene."

"Oh. That's a relief."

"But the lids are not the same. The

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yogurt top is a number 4,whereas the margarine top is a number 2."

"You mean the lids are not made of the same plastic as thecontainers?" my wife exclaimed.

"Exactly," I replied. "And not the same as each other. Theremust be a reason they use for the yogurt top a plastic of suchpoor upbringing that our recycling program rejects it. It mightbe dangerous to mix them up."

"That's silly."

"Then why else would they need three different plastics for twosimple containers that are used for essentially the same purposeunder the same conditions?"

My wife turned around to leave. "Wait," I cried. "There's more."

"I was afraid of that."

"The parfait container has no number. Does that mean it'sundercover? The lid is a 4, which means we can switch it withthe yogurt lid, but not with the margarine lid."

"The parfait container is clear. You can see through it. Maybethey can't recycle see-through plastics."

"Exactly what I thought," I exclaimed. "But look at yourshampoo. It's in a clear bottle, a number 1. But the matchingconditioner, which is not clear, is in a number 2."

"That makes sense," my wife assured me. "Maybe."

"Not really. Number 2 is used in the margarine lid, the big icecream bucket and the vitamin jar. Besides, here is anothermargarine container made of clear plastic, and it is also a 5with a 4 lid."

"This is way too confusing," my wife said. "We have a baby toattend to. She just can't seem to sleep."

"With all our containers mixed up like this, who knows what theworld is coming to," I cried. "No wonder she can't sleep."

About the author:The author is David Leonhardt, The Happy Guy. To receive hissatire column weekly in your inbox, sign up athttp://TheHappyGuy.com/positive-thinking-free-ezine.html or readmore columns athttp://TheHappyGuy.com/self-actualization-articles.html . Thisarticle is also viewable athttp://TheHappyGuy.com/plastic-recycling-product.html .