What the number in the recycling triangle means | Shahmaran
Environmental
What the number in the recycling triangle means
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On the bottom of almost every plastic thing you own there is a small number, from 1 to 7, inside a triangle.
Almost everyone reads it wrongly.
Sources
ASTM D7611/D7611M — Standard Practice for Coding Plastic Manufactured Articles for Resin Identification. States that Resin Identification Codes are not recycle codes, and that using one does not imply the article is recycled or that systems exist to process it; the marking was respecified from chasing arrows to a solid equilateral triangle to reduce that confusion
US Environmental Protection Agency — Advancing Sustainable Materials Management, for how far recycling rates vary between plastics