Plastics Presentation: Sink or Swim?

So, it's likely that most people don't actually understand exactly HOW deep into the whole plastics recycling issue we've gotten here at Atlas Games. Case in point: Last week John Nephew -- President and CEO of Atlas Games -- went to his kids' summer camp to do a presentation on how to ID different plastics, since they were having a park cleanup day. It turns out that plastics each have a different specific gravity. That means that if you put a bunch of pieces of plastic into a jar of water, polyolefins (the kind we're interested in recycling) will "swim" and everything else will sink. Grab those floating bits, put them into a jar of watered-down alcohol (.92 specific gravity), then polyethylene (#2 & #4) will sink and polypropylene (#5) will "swim." And that's how you can sort your entire recycling bin's unknown plastics. Who knew?! Well, our kids and all their camp friends know now! :)