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Plastic recycling labels are everywhere: The ubiquitous "chasing arrows" symbol adorns everything from plastic bags and water bottles to kids' toys.
Most commonly, these symbols appear with a number — 1 through 7 — that identifies the type of plastic resin a product is made of. A number 1, for instance, corresponds to polyethylene terephthalate, or PET — the stuff that makes up water bottles. Number 6 is for polystyrene, used in foam cups and trays. The plastics industry insists these icons were never meant to indicate a product's recyclability, even though that is how they are often perceived by consumers.
In fact, most plastics are not recyclable, largely because there is no market for materials labeled 3 through 7. But that hasn't stopped the widespread use of the chasing arrows.
With no federal program to evaluate products' recyclability and issue labels for them, third-party organizations have stepped in to play this role instead. One organization in particular, How2Recycle, has devised an elaborate hierarchy with several versions of its own recycling symbol, which it sells to hundreds of companies ranging from Lowe's to Beyond Meat.
The organization, whose parent nonprofit is based in Virginia, says it analyzes waste management systems nationwide to figure out whether companies' products and packaging are recyclable and then issues a...
Vadodara/Surat. A special CBI court has convicted four individuals in a 23-year-old fire insurance fraud case in Gujarat and sentenced each of them to three years of rigorous imprisonment. The cou...