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Plastic Bottles make life so much easier. They're lightweight and easy to hold, and they're also strong and hard to break. A plastic bottle is the best way to contain and carry many kinds of liquid, from water and soft drinks to oil to household cleaners and baby formula. The plastic bottle is a great invention, but what happens to it when that handy container is empty?

How Bottles Can Hurt the Environment

Since the 1970s, people who care about the environment and the health of our planet have been worried about how to dispose of plastic once it's been used. Today, about 60 million water bottles are thrown away every day in America, and it can take up to 700 years for just one plastic bottle to break down in a process called biodegrading, which is also the process that happens when a piece of fruit rots. These Glass Bottles fill up our landfills, and we need landfill space to bury trash that can't be recycled. Throwing away plastic also hurts the environment in other ways. As plastic decays, it can give off chemicals that get into our water and air and can make people, plants, and animals sick.

To solve these problems, people have worked together to develop a process to recycle plastic bottles and convert them into other useful items, including clothes, furniture, fences, and new plastic bottles, bags, and containers.

The Process of Recycling Plastic

Recycling takes many steps. First, the bottles have to be collected from homes, businesses, and other sites. Then, every plastic bottle must be separated from metal, glass, and other things that people put into recycling bins. The Plastic Bottles are also sorted by the type of plastic they're made from. Then, the bottles are cleaned to remove any food, liquid, or chemical residue.

Next, all of the bottles are ground up and shredded into flakes. Finally, they are melted down and formed into small pellets, each about the size of a grain of rice. The pellets are bundled up and sold to companies that can melt them and make them into many different products. Just think of all of the plastic toys, tools, electronic gadgets, and other plastic things in your own home. Many of these are made with recycled plastic.

Why Should We Recycle?

There are many reasons to recycle Plastic Caps. For starters, recycling reduces the pollution that can come from the chemicals used to make these bottles. Recycling also helps cut down on the amount of trash thrown into landfills, so our garbage does not take up as much space. Recycling also creates jobs for people who collect recyclable things and work at places that turn them into new materials.