Plastics and recycling symbols article

A friend of mine at ENVOSO, Sarah Crawford, requested a while ago an article on plastics, and what the symbols on the bottom of plastic containers means. So in an upcoming edition of Action Change I'll put in this info. Just to let you know, just because plastic has a circle or triangle of arrows on it, doesn't mean it's recyclable. It needs to have the symbol of what plastic it is in the triangle. And even then, just because something IS recyclable, doesn't mean that we in Australia, or your local council recycles it. The best thing to do in the meantime is contact your local council and find out what plastics they are currently recycling: often they'll have a printed guide.

I've also been asked about the safety of plastics for food and water. A program on health, viewed on one of our commercial networks recently had this as one of their stories. I was very interested to see that the person they used as their `expert' on the safety of plastics was a head of the plastics industry in Australia! Does anyone else see how biased that is? I often wonder if everyday Australians think about things like that: even recognise what happened in that situation. We're not really taught to be media savvy, and I thnk it washes over most people. It would've been ok if they at least sought the opinion of someone on the other side of the fence, but the program failed to do even that. I am not impressed. Especially from a program that touts itself as being the real deal about health issues. Stay tuned...