Pupils Prohibit Plastic Polymers in Personal Product Packaging Project


Theme
Plastic is used to package all manner of household goods. Six polymers constitute the bulk of the material incorporated in household plastic packaging. Since there is no commercial market for mixed plastics, numbers from one through six adorn all plastic packaging to aid recycling depots.

Project
Using a suitable source of information, electronic or otherwise, identify which polymer corresponds to a given recycling number. Armed with this information, perform an audit of the plastic packaging products in your household.

The digital document that reports your investigation is to incorporate:

  • information outlining the frequency of each of the plastic types and their uses in your household
  • a computer-generated bar or pie chart illustrating the relative frequencies/numbers of each plastic used in your household
  • a second bar or pie chart illustrating the relative frequencies/numbers of each plastic used in the average household, according to industry sources
  • a short discussion of any similarities or differences between the two charts.