A planetary atlas of material flowsOpening this view…
Start with an everyday object or material.
Jump directly to a material, regional account or named facility.
From chemical feedstocks to everyday packaging. Follow polymers through production, use, sorting and the processes that prepare them for another life.
Polymer production makes the material that is shaped into packaging. PET, HDPE and PP are different materials.
Energy use and production residues sit upstream of the finished container.
Manufacturers mould or form packaging. Polymer type, colour and added layers affect how it can be recovered.
A recycling symbol alone does not establish local acceptance.
Local programs collect accepted material. Some packaging needs a depot stream rather than a mixed curbside bin.
Wrong items and contamination interfere with recovery.
Sorting separates materials. Recycling prepares recovered plastic as feedstock for manufacturers. Recycle BC names Merlin as its primary plastics recycler.
The program does not publish a bale-to-pellet yield in the evidence used here.
A manufacturer uses the feedstock in another product. The output depends on the material specification and buyer.
A named final product for an individual household item is not documented.
Explore the local operations and regional systems that collect, transform and recover this material.
Checking available records…
A whole-economy view of what ultimately happens to plastic waste.
No. This number describes the location of reported recycling end markets. It is not the share of all plastic sold, discarded or collected that became a new product.
Not necessarily. Hartland describes some bulky rigid plastics being ground with wood for landfill cover. That is a different use from producing resin for new packaging.