Long ago I bought myself some lentils from a major retailer of whole foods. They came in a clear, crinkly, sharp kind of plastic bag with colorful, crisp images.  The bag had no plastic code so I  set about researching the packaging. I phoned and asked the producer/ retailer but they couldn’t help me. So I had the packaging analyzed. I can now tell them that it was in fact a film consisting of a series of bonded layers including a 70 micron thick polypropylene and ethylene layer, laminated and printed. Or to put it more simply several layers of plastic each with different properties stuck together.

This method of making plastic films leads to a very versatile product that looks good and has a wide range of uses.

On the down side these films are difficult to recycle. Because they consist of different plastics bonded together it is difficult to know what they are and how to treat them and separating the films is tricky and so very expensive. Films therefore often don’t get recycled but burnt or landfilled.

Just to remind you

Another barrier to [plastic] recycling is the widespread use of dyes, fillers, and other additives in plastics. The polymer is generally too viscous to economically remove fillers, and would be damaged by many of the processes that could cheaply remove the added dyes. Additives are less widely used in beverage containers and plastic bags, allowing them to be recycled more often. . Yet another barrier to removing large quantities of plastic from the waste stream and landfills is the fact that many common but small plastic items lack the universal triangle recycling symbol and accompanying number. From  Wikipedia on plastic recycling

So if you need to buy something in plastic, try avoid the film and go for easily recycled polythene. You can find some suppliers here….

Plastics used to package food include the following. Copied from practical action 

Films