How does recycling work?

Pick up a soda bottle and look at the bottom. It will have either have "PET" on its base, or a number enclosed in the recycling sign.

When you drop this bottle into the recycling bin, it's sent to a separation center where different plastics are separated by family type, either by hand or by machine.

The separated plastic parts are then ground up into fine chips, which are then fed into a machine called an extruder. There the chips are melted and re-formed into pellets that can be used to make benches, pots, artificial lumber, and many other items.