When you throw something in the recycling bin, where does it really end up?
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, the average person in the United States generates almost 5 pounds of trash each day. Even among the small portion of that waste that is technically eligible to be recycled, some materials and types of packaging are more likely to be recovered for reuse rather than ending up in a landfill.
Regardless of what a product looks like or what its label says, not all plastic containers, glass jars, paper bags or cardboard boxes are actually recycled.
Grayparrot, a UK-based waste analysis company, uses artificial intelligence to track the recycling rates of different objects. The company analyzes more than 100 billion pieces of waste annually at recycling facilities around the world. Their data shows that rates can vary widely, even between two similar products, and that not all materials considered green are actually green.
The following quiz compares objects used for similar purposes. Guess which item in each pair is most likely to be recycled, based on findings from Grayparrot and other reports; then read why.
