Why recycle plastic milk bottles?
Recycling benefits everyone. Students learn to care for the environment and recycling teaches social responsibility; the district may be able to lower their trash-disposal costs; and for each bottle recycled the community saves landfill space. In fact, two million bottles — easily collected in a school year from a district with 30 schools — recycled and diverted from the landfill is equivalent to the space taken up by 1,182 refrigerators. Recycling a ton of plastic bottles saves the equivalent of 3.8 barrels of oil.1 The natural resin used to make plastic products is mostly derived from petroleum and natural gas; substituting recycled plastic resin to make new products helps save these natural resources. Additionally, the process of making new plastic products requires less than half the energy when recycled plastic resin is used in place of natural resin.
