What Plastic is What

Ever wonder about those numbers on the bottom of plastic containers?  Here’s my cheat sheet…

 PET or PETE: polyethylene terephthalate.  Used in drink bottles (clear or lightly coloured).  Easily recycled.  Per Treehugger, doesn’t leach.

PET water bottles were the subject of a scare implying that reusing water bottles resulted in DEHA (a suspected carcinogen) leaching into beverages. While it got a lot of coverage, it now seems that the evidence for this claim was pretty shaky (some reports state that this type of plastic doesn’t even contain DEHA). Health advocates will caution that there isn’t enough research to know the effects of plastic, and ya gotta wonder about those bottles when they get heated up, but even Treehugger says that PET plastics don’t leach.  (Sources:  Snopes, U Florida summary, About.com’s Urban Legends,  The Free Library)

HDPE: high density polyethylene. Used in milk jugs, trash bags, detergent and shampoo bottles and some yogurt pots (cloudy or white). Easily recycled.  Doesn’t leach.

 PVC: Vinyl or polyvinyl chloride. Used in some cling wraps, some cooking-oil bottles and squash bottles (with handles), meat packaging, childrens toys, fashion accessories, shower curtains, office binders, detergent and spray bottles.  Limited recyclability. Per Treehugger, it’s “a bad, bad plastic.” Soft PVC (UPVC) can leach phthalates (an hormone disruptor) and off-gas chemicals into the air.

 LDPE: low-density polyethylene. Used in shopping/carrier bags, some cling wraps, baby bottles, reusable drink & food containers.  Recycleable in some areas (not generally recycled in the UK, although some supermarkets offer carrier bag recycling). Per Treehugger, it doesn’t leach.

PP: Polypropylene. Used in baby bottles, yogurt and takeout containers, reusable food and drink containers (e.g., Tupperware and Rubbermaid-types), drinking straws. Sometimes recyclable (not generally recycled in the UK).  Per Treehugger, it doesn’t leach.

PS: Polystyrene. Used in takeout food containers, egg containers, plastic cutlery, CD cases, Styrofoam. Leaches styrene (a neurotoxin and possible human carcinogen). Banned in Portland Oregon and San Francisco. Not often recyclable.

Everything else.

PC: Polycarbonate. Used in Nalgene water bottles (although Nalgene has now switched from polycarbonate) and baby bottles. Leaches the plasticizer bisphenol A (BPA – a hormone disruptor that mimics estrogen) when heated (see this Time article).  

PLA: polyactide – (one type of) bioplastics. Not easily recycled.  May contain toxins so can only be composted commercially.

Compostable Plastic – according to Ideal Bite, it’s nontoxic and “breaks down as fast as paper in compost.”  My own research of a Sainsbury’s compostable plastic bag disproves this, although it did eventually break down, and it is better than putting it in the bin.

Sources:  TreeHugger, Planet Green, Ideal Bite, Ecology Center