Until recently, many communities could only recycle plastics 1 and 2. Because of public demand, ecomaine studied the market for lower-grade plastics 3 through 7 and found that recycling them and selling the new products overseas made more sense.

“It’s actually more cost effective for us to recycle it than to incinerate it,” said Missi Labbe, business development manager at ecomaine. Labbe estimates that 95 percent of waste-handling operations take only plastics 1 and 2.

Seasoned recyclers know that there is more to plastic than meets the eye. Listed below are the different types of plastic and their common uses.

Code Material Examples

1 Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) water and soft drink bottles

2 High Density Polyethylene milk and water jugs,

detergent bottles

3 Vinyl/Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) durable construction

products like

pipes and siding

4 Low Density Polythylene (LPDE) plastic film items, like

grocery bags

5 Polypropylene (PP) durable fibers like rope

and textiles

6 Polystyrene (PS) often used in styrofoam

form; fast food packaging,

meat trays

7 All other resins various plastics commonly

used in plastic lumber, ketchup bottles