Only 26% of plastic bottles are recycled and about 8 million tons of plastic are found each year in the ocean.
According to Weill Cornell Medical College, “all plastics go through the same recycling process. They’re sorted, baled, screened to remove contaminants, washed, ground into flakes, separated from contaminants, dried, melted, filtered, and formed into pellets. This is an expensive and time-consuming process, and recyclers want to make sure it’s worth it financially.”
Plastic bottle caps are often thrown in the trash since most recycling facilities don’t accept them because they’re difficult to sort in which they appear in landfills, incinerators or the ocean. A facility called Rosebud Continuum that practice environmental sustainability are melting the bottle caps into signs as one of the solutions.
“It’s all about lengthening the lifecycle of that single item,” said Climate Change Graduate Student Melody Yin.
Students at Rosebud Continuum are finding ways to create sustainable solutions to decrease the amount of pollution occurring in America.
One of its students, Lidiah, who is from Indonesia, wants to use the same methods that she learns from Rosebud Continuum back home. She seen how unsustainable living and tourism can do in the Citarum River located in the capital city.
“So it flows along with the city, and when the population increase it becomes so dirty like very polluted it becomes the third largest no the second-largest polluted River in the world,” says Sustainable Tourism Graduate Student Lidiah Iwo.
To find out more information about what you can do with non-recyclable items or how to recycle properly, you can go to Earth 911.com
CREDITS:
Editor: Carla Ibanez
Writer: Nova Charles, Carla Ibanez
Reporters: Nova Charles (found story & gathered content), Carla Ibanez (on camera presence)
Videographer: Sean Stover, Carla Ibanez, Nova Charles
Graphics: Carla Ibanez
Anchor: Dylan Zuccarello
Web Editor: Chloe Benjamin
Copy Desk Chief: Austin Federau
