Plastic Bottles make life so much easier. They're lightweight and easy to hold, and they're also strong and hard to break. A plastic bottle is the best way to contain and carry many kinds of liquid, from water and soft drinks to oil to household cleaners and baby formula. The plastic bottle is a great invention, but what happens to it when that handy container is empty? How Bottles Can Hurt the Environment Since the 1970s, people who care about the environment and the health of our planet have been worried about how to dispose of plastic once it's been used. Today, about 60 million water bottles are thrown away every day in America, and it can take up to 700 years for just one plastic bottle to break down in a process called biodegrading, which is also the process that happens when a piece of fruit rots. These Glass Bottles fill up our landfills, and we need landfill space to bury trash that can't be recycled. Throwing away plastic also hurts the environment in other ways. As plastic decays, it can give off chemicals that get into our water and air and can make people, plants, and animals sick. To solve these problems, people have worked together to develop a process to recycle plastic bottles and convert them into other useful items, including clothes, furniture, fences, and new plastic bottles, bags, and containers. The Process of Recycling Plastic Recycling takes many steps. First, the bottles have to be collected from homes, businesses, and other sites. Then, every plastic bottle must be separated from metal, glass, and other things that people put into recycling bins. The Plastic Bottles are also sorted by the type of plastic they're made from. Then, the bottles are cleaned to remove any food, liquid, or chemical residue. Next, all of the bottles are ground up and shredded into flakes. Finally, they are melted down and formed into small pellets, each about the size of a grain of rice. The pellets are bundled up and sold to companies that can melt them and make them into many different products. Just think of all of the plastic toys, tools, electronic gadgets, and other plastic things in your own home. Many of these are made with recycled plastic. Why Should We Recycle? There are many reasons to recycle Plastic Caps. For starters, recycling reduces the pollution that can come from the chemicals used to make these bottles. Recycling also helps cut down on the amount of trash thrown into landfills, so our garbage does not take up as much space. Recycling also creates jobs for people who collect recyclable things and work at places that turn them into new materials. Recycling is good for the economy and the environment, and it's easy to do. All you have to do is remember to throw things into the right bins when you are done with them. But you can also do more, especially if places that you usually spend time do not have to recycle bins. Students can talk to their school board, principal, and teachers about setting up recycling programs at school. You can also organize can and Cap drives to pick up litter and sort out recyclables in parks and along streets. And you can make signs to spread the word that recycling is easy and important to do. Plastic Lotion Pumps, one of the most popular dispensing methods for viscous (thick liquid) products in the personal care and beauty industry, come in all shapes and sizes. When used as designed, pumps dispense the right amount of product time after time. But have you ever wondered what goes in a lotion pump to makes it work? While there are hundreds of different designs in the market today, the basic principle is the same, and Packaging Crash Course took apart one of these lotion pumps to give you an overview of these components, and how they contribute to the overall functionality of pumping the product from the bottle to your hand. The actuator is often made of PP plastic and can have many different designs - and often come with a up-lock or down-lock features to prevent accidental output,. This is one of the component designs that can set one Pump apart from another when it comes to the exterior design, it is also the part where ergonomics play a role in consumer satisfaction. These are the components that go into a Fine Mist Sprayer : Dust Cap: Often made of PP plastic and very often produced in clear, the dust cap serves as a dust cover and safety cap that protects the actuator from gathering dust and prevents accidental actuation. To help the package stands out on the shelf, the dust cap can be produced in stock or custom color. Actuator: Commonly made of PP plastic, this is the component that the consumer pushes down to spray the product out of the bottle. Different than an actuator on a Lotion Pump, the actuator of a Fine Mist Sprayer has internal components including an insert to create the specific misting pattern of the product being sprayed. Some Fine Mist Sprayers have locking features that prevent accidental dispensing. Insert: This tiny component consists of channels that the liquid flows through to create the mist pattern. This insert fits on the exterior of the actuator in many cases, and it is the part where the product exits the sprayer.