Bottle recycling facts for kids

Bottles can be recycled, which is a great way to help our planet! When you recycle a bottle, it can be collected from your home (called kerbside collection) or returned to a special place to get a small refund (this is part of a bottle deposit system). Right now, about 1 million plastic bottles are bought every minute around the world, but only about half of them get recycled.

Recycling Glass Bottles

Recycling glass bottles has many awesome benefits! Glass is super special because it can be recycled again and again without losing its quality. This means a glass bottle can become a new glass bottle, or even something else entirely, like part of a road or concrete.

When glass is recycled, it saves a lot of energy. For example, recycling just one glass bottle can save enough energy to power a computer for 25 minutes! Plus, using recycled glass to make new bottles means less air pollution.

How Glass is Sorted

Glass bottles are often sorted by color:

• Clear glass is the most valuable. It can be used to make lots of new clear glass items.
• Brown glass is often used for new beer bottles.
• Green glass is sometimes sent to other countries, like Europe, to make wine bottles.

Sometimes, small pieces of glass that can't be sorted are ground into a fine powder. This powder can be used instead of sand to make concrete, which is pretty cool!

Recycling Plastic Bottles

Plastic bottles are also very important to recycle. Different types of plastic bottles are used for different things and are recycled in slightly different ways.

PET Bottles

Many plastic bottles, like those for water or soda, are made from a type of plastic called PET. You can usually find the resin identification code number "1" inside the universal recycling symbol on the bottom of these bottles. When PET bottles are recycled, they are often turned back into raw material to make new plastic products.

HDPE Bottles

Another common type of plastic bottle is made from HDPE. This is often used for milk jugs or detergent bottles. You'll usually see the recycling code "2" on these. In the United States, about 30-35% of HDPE bottles are recycled.

Bottle Deposit Systems

Some places have special laws called Container deposit legislation. These laws mean that when you buy a drink in a bottle, you pay a small extra amount (a deposit). When you return the empty bottle, you get that deposit money back. This encourages people to recycle their bottles instead of throwing them away. For example, in May 2018, the Israeli government fined bottle companies that didn't meet their recycling goals.

Why Recycling Matters for the Environment

When we compare reusable bottles to single-use bottles, it's a bit like looking at a whole journey. Scientists use something called a life cycle analysis to study all the steps involved, from making a bottle to what happens after you use it. This helps us understand the good and bad points of each option.

For reusable bottles, like some glass milk bottles, they need to be collected, cleaned, and checked to make sure they are safe to use again. If a reusable bottle breaks or gets too dirty, it can't be used anymore, which reduces its environmental benefits. For single-use bottles, how much they help the environment depends on how many of them actually get recycled. For example, if only a small percentage of a certain type of plastic bottle is recycled, then many of them end up as waste.