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Buying Recycled

What is "Buying Recycled?" • What Are the Benefits of Buying Recycled • A Recycled Product Shopping List • Buy-Recycled Facts

What is "Buying Recycled?

It means purchasing items that are made from postconsumer recycled content - or materials that have been recovered from recycling programs and then recycled into new products. This process is known as "closing the loop."

Consumers "close the loop" when they purchase products made from recycled materials. If no one buys recycled-content products, the recycling process it ineffective.

Consumers hold the key to making recycling work. By buying recycled-content goods, consumers ensure the continued availability of natural resources for the future.

The first step in buying recycled-content products is to correctly identify them. To help consumers decipher product claims about recycled content, the Federal Trade Commission has issued guidelines that ensure that products are properly and clearly labeled. Here are some basic definitions:

• Recycled-content products are made from materials that have been recovered from the solid waste stream, either during the manufacturing process or after consumer use.
   
• Postconsumer content indicates that materials used to make a product were recovered or otherwise diverted from the solid waste stream after consumer use. If this term is not noted, the material probably came from excess material generated during normal manufacture processes.
   
• Recyclable products can be collected, separated, or otherwise recovered from the solid waste stream for use in the form of raw materials in the manufacture of a new product. These products do not necessarily contain recycled materials and only benefit the environment if people recycle them after use. Not all communities collect all types of products for recycling, so it is really only recyclable if your community accepts it.
   
• Products wrapped in recycled or recyclable packaging do not necessarily contain recycled content. They can be wrapped in paper or plastic made from recycled materials, which is agood start, but the most environmentally preferable packaging is none at all.

Consumers must remember to read further than the recycling symbol or the vague language to find specific and verifiable claims.

What Are the Benefits of Buying Recycled?

Important advantages to buying recycled content products include:

• Waste and Pollution Prevention: Manufacturing products with recycled-content generally creates much less waste and pollution, ranging from truck emissions to raw material scraps.
   
• Resource and Energy Conservation: Making a new product from recycled-content materials generally reduces the amount of energy and virgin materials needed to manufacture the product.
   
• Economic Development: It is estimated that nine jobs are created for every 15,000 tons of solid waste recycled into a new product.
   
• Money Savings: Products such as re-refined motor oil, retreaded tires, and remanufactured automotive batteries will often cost less than their virgin material counterparts.

A Recycled Product Shopping List

More that 4,500 recycled-content products are already available in stores, and their numbers are rapidly growing. Some of the everyday products people regularly purchase contain recycled-content. Here are some items that are typically made with recycled materials:

• Aluminum cans
• Cereal boxes
• Egg cartons
• Nails
• Newspapers
• Paper towels
• Carpeting
• Anything made from steal
• Glass containers
• Laundry detergent bottles
• Trash bags
• Motor oil

Buy-Recycled Facts

Aluminum cans contain an average of 50% recycled postconsumer content, while glass bottles contain an average of 30%.

Manufacturers in the US bought $5 billion worth of recycled materials in 1996.

One 6-foot-long plastic park bench can be made from 1,050 plastic milk jugs.

How many recycled plastic soda bottles does it take to make:

1 XL T-shirt . . . . . . . . . . 5 bottles
1 Ski jacket filler . . . . . . 5 bottles
1 Sweater . . . . . . . . . . 27 bottles
1 Sleeping bag  . . . . . .35 bottles

Adapted from EPA's The Quest for Less