The rest of the material goes on a belt that carries the glass and plastic to the last screening area. The glass gets crushed and the plastic gets sorted and flattened.

“This is a very sophisticated machine. And that belt brings it down to the bunker. The plastic goes to the bunker, from the bunker we put it to the baler, it gets baled and gets shipped out.”

Local recycling programs often require people to separate plastics, papers and glass. But Yehenew Gedshew says sorters at his recycling center do that all that work. He says the center ships most of its plastic to a processing center in North Carolina, more than 500 kilometers to the south. At that center, mountains of bottles become piles of plastic. They are ready to be melted and shaped into something new.

From the store to the recycling bin, and from there to just about anywhere you can imagine, plastic bottles spend a lot of time on the road. And so have we. We now go to Fayetteville, North Carolina. The city is home to the Clear Path Recycling center. It is one of the largest plastic recycling centers in the United States. Jay Chilton supervises the center.

“On an average week we receive anywhere from 1 to one and one half million pounds of bottles into the plant.”

In metric terms, that is 454,000 to 680,000 kilograms. The Clear Path Recycling Center receives eight to 10 trucks a day. That means more than 18,000 kilograms of plastic every day. The goods come to the center in large piles or bales, like the ones at the recycling center in Maryland.