Recycling by product massive number of types of plastic, they each carry a resin identification code, and must be sorted before they can be recycled. This can be costly; while metals can be sorted using electromagnets, no such 'easy sorting' capability exists for plastics. In addition to this, while labels do not need to be removed from bottles for recycling, lids are often made from a different kind of non-recyclable plastic. To help in identifying the materials in various plastic items, resin identification code numbers 1-6 have been assigned to six common kinds of recyclable plastic resins, with the number 7 indicating any
Plastic recycling code which is not on all plastic parts but just a subset that includes the recycling symbol as part of its design. The resin identification code is stamped or printed on the bottom of containers and surrounded by a triangle of arrows. (See the table in Plastic.) The intent of these symbols was to make it easier to identify the type of plastics used to make a particular container and to indicate that the plastic is potentially recyclable. The question that remains is which types of plastics can be recycled by local recycling centers. In many communities, not all types