The Benefits

When companies such as ourselves choose to use rPET in their products, they provide a market for recycled plastics. Like any business, recycling facilities have to make money–if they’re not turning a profit from the materials they collect, they’ll stop collecting them. When consumers purchase products made with recycled content, they’re sending a message to companies that they value their sustainability efforts! By creating awareness and demand for recycled products, we help solidify recycling programs and recycled goods as valuable pieces in the production process.

Recycling plastics also helps decrease the amount of plastic waste that enters landfills. Plastics in landfills take thousands of years to break down, and can leach toxic chemicals into the Earth. These chemicals can make their way into groundwater reserves, endangering both humans and animals. Plastics that “break down”, only do so into smaller pieces of plastic, which are still harmful to the ecosystems they may end up in.

Recycling not only provides a better option than the landfill, it also has the ability to greatly decrease our resource extraction. Over 60% of first-time PET production is used to create polyester textiles. By using PET that has already been in circulation, we’re offsetting the amount of new PET that needs to be created.

Energy is a big part of this equation too. Creating a plastic water bottle from 100% recycled content uses 75% less energy than its virgin counterpart. Although some energy and water is still needed to process these plastics into new forms (which is why we love reusable!), the amount is significantly less than creating first-time plastics. This translates to less resource extraction, which protects the natural landscapes where oil and natural gas are extracted. This also means that there is less carbon emitted  during the creation of new products. One year’s worth of recycling common plastics in the US can create the equivalent energy savings of taking 360,000 cars off the road