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
Scavenger resin crosslinked and highly crosslinked. The different solid supports are chosen at the preference of the chemist. Lightly crosslinked refers to the lightly woven polymer portion of the scavenger. This type of resin becomes swollen in a particular solvent, allowing an impurity to react with a specified functional group. In many times single solvents are not sufficient to expand the resin, in which case a second solvent must be added. Examples of a secondary solvent, or co-solvent, would be Tetrahydrofuran, or THF. Typically contain 1–3% of divinylbenzene. Highly crosslinked resins typically swell much less than the latter. The property that allows