Your turn
Each lab is one step from the video. Switch the machines, sort the bin and see what recycling saves.
Each lab isolates one step of the loop. The sorting line and material rounds are simplified models; the rates are EPA 2018 data.
Tap the buttons and watch what happens.
Switch between the straight line and the loop. Where does the stuff end up?
In the linear model every item needs new raw material and ends as waste. The loop reuses material; some still leaks out each lap.
Tap the loop. Does the trash pile stop growing?
Switch a machine off. Where do its items end up?
Each separator targets one property: size and shape, magnetism, conductivity, infrared spectrum. Turn one off and that stream is lost.
Turn off the magnet. Where do the cans go?
Simplified: real lines run several screens and optical sorters in series, and none is 100% accurate.
Pick a material and send it round the loop. Which ones wear out?
Metals and glass remelt without losing quality; paper fibers shorten each cycle (about 5–7), and most plastic is down-cycled.
Paper’s quality drop here is a simple straight line; in real mills new fiber is blended in.
Recycle it, or keep it out? Keep the contamination meter low.
Every wrong item raises the contamination of the load. Rules vary locally: this deck follows common EPA guidance.
Does it go in the recycling? Tap a button.
Slide how many cans get recycled. Watch the energy and the landfill.
Recycled aluminum uses about 5% of the energy of new metal (Aluminum Association). The US can recycling rate was 50.4% in 2018.
Slide to recycle more cans. What happens to the trash pile?
Recycling means turning old things into new things. An old can can become a new can. Old paper can become new paper.
A truck takes your recycling to a big sorting place. Everything rides on a moving belt. Helpers pull out things that don’t belong. A magnet grabs steel cans. Wheels lift up paper. A puff of air pushes plastic bottles into their own pile.
Then factories melt and mash the old stuff and make new things. Your can can be back in the store in about two months!
We cut fewer trees and dig up less rock. Making a can from an old can uses much less energy. And less trash goes into big piles in the ground.
First, use less, and use things again. Then put clean things in the recycling. Scrape out old food. Every town has its own rules, so check with a grown-up.
Recycling is important because it turns things we've finished with back into raw materials, so we need to dig up, cut down and burn less. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) lists three big benefits: recycling conserves natural resources like timber, water and minerals, it saves energy, and it keeps waste out of landfills and incinerators, which cuts pollution and emissions.1 It also creates work: in one year, recycling and reuse activities in the US accounted for about 681,000 jobs.1
The energy savings can be huge. Making aluminum from recycled metal saves about 95% of the energy needed to make new aluminum from ore.9 Even recycling just 10 plastic bottles saves enough energy to power a laptop for more than 25 hours.1
Recycling is the process of collecting and processing materials that would otherwise be thrown away as trash, and turning them into new products.1 The EPA describes it as three steps that repeat over and over: collection and processing, manufacturing new products, and people buying products made from recycled materials. That loop is what the familiar chasing-arrows symbol stands for.1
Without recycling, materials travel in a straight line: take them from nature, make something, use it, throw it away. Recycling bends that line into a loop, so the same aluminum, glass or paper fibers get used again.
After your recycling bin is collected, the truck takes everything to a sorting plant called a materials recovery facility, or MRF (people say "murf"). There, recyclables are sorted, cleaned and processed into materials that factories can use. Those materials are bought and sold just like raw materials.1
Many towns collect all recyclables mixed together in one bin ("single-stream"), so the MRF has to split one mixed pile into clean piles. A typical line works like this:620
Whatever is left at the end, or couldn't be identified, goes to the landfill. The sorted materials are squashed into big bales and shipped to mills and factories.12
| Material | How it's sorted | What happens next | How many times? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aluminum cans | Eddy current | Shredded, melted, cast into ingots, made into new cans and car parts12 | Again and again, no theoretical limit9 |
| Steel cans | Magnet | Melted with other scrap into new steel24 | Again and again (metals don't wear out)9 |
| Paper and cardboard | Spinning discs | Mixed with water into pulp, cleaned, pressed into new paper | About 5 to 7 times11 |
| Glass | Breaker screen | Crushed, cleaned, mixed with sand, soda ash and limestone, melted into new containers12 | Over and over without losing quality417 |
| Plastic | Infrared + air jets | Ground into chips or flakes, washed, melted into pellets or fibers13 | Limited: often made into other products like fleece or benches12 |
Aluminum drink cans are the star of the loop. A 2025 study for the aluminum and can industries found that a used drink can in the United States goes from the recycling bin to a newly made can in less than 60 days on average.10 Because aluminum is a metal, melting it doesn't damage it, so the same metal can be recycled over and over.9
Paper is made of tiny wood fibers. Every time paper is recycled, the fibers get shorter. After about five to seven trips they are too short to bond into new paper, so mills add some new fibers to keep the paper strong.11
"Plastic" is really many different materials. Each type melts at different conditions and they don't mix well, so they have to be sorted by type first.8 NIST researchers give an example: if a plastic bag gets into a batch of milk-bottle plastic, the bag breaks down at the high melting temperature and can turn the whole batch a gross yellow.8 After sorting, plastic is chopped into chips, washed to remove labels and glue, dried and melted into pellets or spun into fibers.13
It saves raw materials. Recycling reduces the need to extract timber, water and minerals for new products.1 For glass, every ton recycled saves over a ton of raw materials, including about 1,300 pounds of sand.17
It saves energy. Making things from recycled materials usually takes less energy than starting from scratch. Recycled aluminum needs only about 5% of the energy of new aluminum.9
It keeps waste out of landfills. In 2018 the US sent about 146 million tons of trash to landfills.2 As food, paper and other organic material rot in a landfill, they give off landfill gas, which is about half methane, a greenhouse gas at least 28 times better than carbon dioxide at trapping heat over 100 years.18 Keeping paper and other materials out of landfills also saves space and reduces pollution.1 (For more on heat-trapping gases, see what causes climate change.)
Here's the honest picture, from the EPA's most recent national figures (2018 data). Americans produced 292.4 million tons of trash, about 4.9 pounds per person per day. About 69 million tons were recycled and 25 million tons composted, a combined rate of 32.1%.2
| Material (US, 2018) | Share recycled |
|---|---|
| Corrugated cardboard boxes | 96.5%14 |
| All paper and paperboard | 68.2%14 |
| Aluminum beer and soft drink cans | 50.4%16 |
| Glass containers | 31.3%15 |
| PET plastic bottles and jars | 29.1%3 |
| All plastics | 8.7%3 |
Paper is a success story. Plastic recycling is low overall: of 35.7 million tons of plastic, only about 3 million tons were recycled. Some plastic containers do much better, though: about 29% of PET bottles and jars (the clear kind used for water and soda) were recycled.3 That's a reason to recycle the plastics your town accepts, and to use less plastic in the first place. (Curious where plastic comes from? See how plastic is made.)
All of those recycled materials would need to come from new trees, new mines and new oil, using more energy along the way, and the tens of millions of tons we recycle each year would go to landfills or incinerators instead.12 Recycling doesn't solve waste on its own, but it takes a big bite out of it.
Recycling is great, but it's not the top of the list. The EPA ranks ways of handling waste, and the most preferred is source reduction: not making the waste at all, by using less, choosing less packaging, and reusing, repairing or donating things.19 The EPA says products should only be recycled if they can't be reduced or reused.1 So: use less, reuse what you can, then recycle the rest, clean and in the right bin.
Recycling conserves natural resources like timber, water and minerals, saves energy (recycled aluminum needs about 5% of the energy of new aluminum), keeps waste out of landfills and incinerators, reduces pollution and emissions, and supports jobs: recycling and reuse accounted for about 681,000 US jobs in one year, according to the EPA.
Making products from recycled materials means fewer trees cut and less mining and drilling, and it usually takes less energy. It also keeps material out of landfills, where rotting waste gives off methane, a powerful heat-trapping gas.
Recyclables are collected and taken to a materials recovery facility. Conveyor belts carry them past workers, screens that catch broken glass, spinning discs that lift out paper and cardboard, a magnet for steel, an eddy current that flings out aluminum, and infrared sensors with air jets that sort plastics. The sorted materials are baled and sold to factories that melt, pulp or remake them into new products.
Everything we recycle would have to be made from new raw materials, using more energy, and tens of millions more tons of waste each year would go to landfills or incinerators. In 2018 Americans recycled about 69 million tons of material.
No. Phones contain lithium-ion batteries that can start fires if they're crushed in a garbage truck or recycling plant. Donate a working phone, or take it to an electronics or battery drop-off program instead of the trash or the curbside bin.
First try to reuse them. If they are worn out, check whether your local program accepts that type of plastic, and scrape them clean first. The number on the bottom shows the plastic type, not whether your town recycles it.
Yes, especially for aluminum, paper, cardboard and glass. Paper is recycled at about 68% and cardboard boxes at over 96% in the US. Plastic recycling is low (8.7% in 2018), which is why reducing and reusing come first.