MYTH: Plastic bags aren’t recyclable.
FACT: Plastic bags are 100% recyclable. But there have often been challenges to getting these very lightweight, strong materials to the municipal recovery facility. Luckily the existing take-back system, where consumers can take their plastic bags back to their grocery store where they will be recycled, does a good job of ensuring that these products don’t end up where they shouldn’t. In fact, with more investment in recycling infrastructure, we may all be able to put plastic bags in our blue recycling bins that get picked up curbside instead of having to bring them back to the grocery store (this is on its way to becoming a reality in some areas of the country, and PLASTICS is working to expand these initiatives to more municipalities).
MYTH: BPA is in plastic water bottles and leaches into the water you’re drinking.
FACT: Bisphenol-A (BPA) is a compound used in certain plastics—but polyethylene terephthalate (PET) isn’t one of those plastics, and that’s what the vast majority of plastic bottles are made of. BPA was once used in polycarbonate plastic, which typically appears in more durable plastic products like windows and electronic products. Today BPA isn’t even used in those applications, and is never used in the production of products that touch your food or drinks.
MYTH: Americans use or discard 500 million straws per day.
FACT: Let’s break this number down, shall we?
There are about 325 million people in the U.S. today, including babies and the elderly. If we used 500 million straws per day, that would mean each American—again, even those who can’t walk or say the word “straw”—uses 1.5 straws per day, on average. That seems like a stretch.
There is a more accurate figure. We found that from May 19, 2017 to May 19, 2018, there were 16,042,654 straws sold in the U.S. per day, based on Nielsen data. That’s not nothing, but it’s not 500 million, a figure based on research conducted in 2011 by Milo Cress, who was nine years old at the time.
Regardless of how many straws we use, we can all agree that no matter what a straw is made of, it should not end up as litter. The real challenge is making it easier for everyone to better dispose of straws and other single-use products by enhancing our recycling and recovery technologies.
MYTH: Polyethylene Terephthalate has phthalates in it (it’s right there in the name!).
FACT: Phthalates are plasticizers typically used to make polyvinyl chloride (PVC) softer and more flexible. Plastic water bottles are typically made of polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which does not contain phthalates. Despite the fact that “phthalate” exists in the name, PET does not contain phthalates.