Safe Plastics

Preserve Plastic™ is BPA and phthalate-free. We obtain our plastics from a network of trusted providers and test every batch that we reprocess into Preserve products.

Our environmental mission drives our company and we are committed to meeting the highest safety standards for all of our products. We work hard to stay on top of the latest research on plastic safety.

In response to the proliferation of confusing news about plastic safety related to baby bottles, plastic water bottles, and other products, we conducted further analysis of the plastics we use in our Preserve products. We again confirmed the safety of our plastics and summarized our findings in a statement we released in September 2008.

Click here to download the full plastic safety statement.

Preserve Plastics Safety: Executive Summary

Since our founding in 1996, Recycline has sought to offer a new way of thinking about the everyday products we use. Products are more than just products. They have implications far beyond the box or the bag. Each one carries a cost. Preserve offers better products—ones that look good, get the job done and require no compromise of you or the earth.

While plastics have radically transformed the kinds of products available for use in our day to day lives—from cars to cell phones and cups to candy wrappers—plastics are also a curious and sometimes confusing material. Since our founding, we have relied on recycled plastic as the primary material we use to make our Preserve products. We use plastic because it’s a widely available and useful material and, by reusing it, we keep it out of landfills. To date, we’ve used only one kind of plastic in our products—recycled #5 polypropylene. We use this material because we have confidence in its performance, health and safety.

As concerns over the health and safety of plastics have mounted, we have taken steps to reexamine our choice to use recycled #5 polypropylene in our products and have conducted tests to ensure the safety of this material. What follows is a summary of a longer research paper we have written that examines our findings on the benefits and safety of the plastics we use:

In the USA about 4% of oil and natural gas consumption is for the production of plastics. Plastics are coded with numbers 1-7 not to categorize which plastics are more or less benign or recyclable but to differentiate among them.

Recycline only uses recycled plastics in our Preserve products because recycled plastics save energy, reduce emissions and lessen the waste that goes into landfills. Some plastics contain harmful chemicals and those chemicals can be harmful to humans if ingested. Other plastics are benign and contain non-harmful, non-leaching monomers. #5 Polypropylene is a benign plastic and is not known to leach.

Some additives in plastics are increasingly being shown to have interactions with the body’s hormone system (a.k.a., the endocrine system). While our plastics do not contain harmful additives, we follow the scientific research and debate closely, and think the precautionary principle should apply. Thus we do not introduce any possible endocrine disrupters into our plastics. Furthermore, our systems are designed to make all of our Preserve plastics from recycled products and packaging that have not had these chemicals introduced to them.

The impacts on humans from plastics are often dependent on the manner in which these plastics are used. When exposed to heat most plastics begin to degrade. When this happens, additives and monomers from the plastics are more likely to leach out of the plastics, and/or even combine with other available chemicals. Dishwashers represent a condition of a low-level of heat for a long duration. The addition of strong cleaners in the dishwasher presents opportunities for leaching of additives and monomers from plastics. We recommend that you only put plastics marked as dishwasher safe in your dishwasher. All of our Preserve plastics are dishwasher safe.

Recycled plastics have a variety of benefits. They decrease waste sent to landfills; reduce use of non-renewable resources, like natural gas and oil; decrease energy use; and decrease emissions of carbon dioxide. Preserve products are better for the earth for these reasons. And, because of the care we use in selecting and testing the materials we use for Preserve, we are confident that our products are BPA and phthalate free and safe for use by you and by our families.

We exist as a company to increase the day-to-day smart choices we all make that benefit the environment. One way we do that is by increasing the demand for recycled materials. Another way we do that is by providing opportunities to recycle our products when you’re finished with them. To learn how to recycle your Preserve products, visit our Gimme 5 page.