Preserve Gimme 5

One thing I was disappointed to discover is that depending on where you live, only certain types of plastics can be recycled (tip: you can visit this site to find out what can and cannot be recycled in your area. The website allows you to search for all types of products, not just plastic). Polypropylene (PP), the #5 plastic, is not widely recyclable, which means these types of plastics tend to occupy landfills for no good reason. Items like food containers and squeeze bottles are made from PP. Apparently many other items are too, such as Brita water filters, Brita pitchers, and Preserve plastic products, such as their toothbrushes, razors, and tongue cleaners.

In an effort to clean up landfills and reduce the consumption of energy by recycling #5 plastics into new products (it takes less energy to recycle than it does to create from scratch), Preserve has developed a new program called Preserve Gimme 5.

To identify whether or not your plastic is a #5 plastic, look for a triangle stamp (similar to the ones you see here on the right) on the product and find the number inside of it. This stamp may be small depending on the product. For my Brita water filter I actually had to use my hand lens to read the number.

There are two ways you can recycle your #5 plastics through this program. The first, and easiest way, is to drop your plastics off at a select location. To find if there is a location in your neck of the woods, go here. If there isn’t, you can mail your plastics to:

Preserve Gimme 5
823 NYS Rte 13
Cortland, NY 13045

Unfortunately, for my area, there is currently no drop-off location. I still plan to participate but I have decided to wait until I have a large amount of plastic to send. It’s a waste of fuel and money to send only one or two items at a time.

Yes, it is unfortunate that some may have to pay postage to mail in their plastics, but it’s for a good cause! Besides, if you buy Preserve products, you can mail them in for free by going here to print the shipping label. This may seem like an incentive to get you to buy Preserve products (and maybe it is), but what you may not realize is by doing that you’re also purchasing from the same pool of plastic, not from a company that has created new plastic products to add to the amount that already exists.