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If you’ve ever squeezed a ketchup bottle, torn open a bread bag, or pulled plastic wrap tight over a bowl, you’ve handled LDPE. It’s one of the most common plastics in daily life, yet most people have never heard its full name: Low Density Polyethylene, or resin code #4 if you’ve ever flipped over a…
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Polystyrene (PS) is a plastic made from styrene. It comes as a hard solid or a lightweight foam (EPS and XPS), and it carries resin code #6. It’s cheap, insulates well and molds easily, which is why it’s everywhere. It’s technically recyclable, but very few programs collect it. You’ve almost certainly touched some today: a…
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Open a yogurt tub, flip up a shampoo cap, sit in a car. You’ve touched polypropylene. It’s the plastic behind bumpers, carpets, surgical masks, reusable food boxes and the little hinge on a ketchup lid that opens ten thousand times without snapping. Polypropylene at a glance Polypropylene (PP) is a lightweight thermoplastic made from propylene.…
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You probably touched PVC today without noticing. It could be the pipe behind your wall, the insulation on your phone charger, the floor under your feet, or the frame around your window. These products look nothing alike, yet they start from the same polymer. PVC (polyvinyl chloride) is a synthetic thermoplastic made from chlorine and…
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Look under a milk jug, a shampoo bottle, or a laundry detergent container and you’ll usually find a little “2” stamped inside a triangle. That’s HDPE — high-density polyethylene — and it’s quietly everywhere: water pipes, recycling bins, crates, outdoor furniture, the works. What makes it so popular is a rare combination: it’s light, tough,…
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Grab any clear water bottle or soda bottle off a store shelf and odds are you’re holding PET plastic. It’s everywhere — but most people who use it every day couldn’t tell you what it actually is, or what happens to it after it goes in the bin. PET stands for polyethylene terephthalate. It got…
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Plastic made from plants sounds like a straightforward improvement over plastic made from oil and gas. In practice, the comparison is more complicated. Bio-based plastics replace some or all fossil feedstock with biological material such as sugar, starch, vegetable oils, forestry material or organic waste. That can reduce dependence on fossil carbon and, in the…