[1] Look around your kitchen to see what can be recycled (photo courtesy Plastic News).

[2] Yogurt cups (photo courtesy Yellow Images).

[3] Water bottles are one of the biggest contributors to landfill (photo courtesy Free Images Live).
 

[4] Resin codes, established by the ASTM International Resin Identification Coding System. Here’s what they mean.

On this last day of Earth Month, we’re taking the opportunity to discuss recycling plastics, an anti-environment scourge of the kitchen.

Here’s the scoop:

All potentially recyclable plastic contains a triangle with a number inside (photo #4).

Those numbers are resin identification codes, which tell what kind of plastic the item is made from. The codes were created by the ASTM International Resin Identification Coding System.

Plastics recycling opportunities vary by municipality. Not all recyclable plastics can be processed by all communities.

And not all plastic is recyclable.

To impede the effort, some plastics manufacturers omit the triangle.
 
 
WHAT YOU CAN DO

1. PARTICIPATE: It may take some extra work, but keeping plastics out of the landfill by recycling them will make you feel better. Pat yourself on the back every time you have a yogurt or a soft drink.

2. RESEARCH: If you’re not already familiar with your municipality’s recycling opportunities, check its website. Or, search online for your local recycling program.

3. UNDERSTAND: If your plastic’s triangle has numbers 1, 2 or 5, great: These are the plastics with the greatest recycling demand in the U.S.

What this means is, there is a secondary market for these recycled plastics. The money companies pay for them helps to offset the costs of municipalities’ recycling equipment and processing.

Examples include butter tubs, laundry detergent bottles, milk jugs, soda and water bottles and yogurt cups. Rinse or otherwise clean them before recycling, and remove any paper labels if you can.

4. AVOID: Plastics made with resins 4, 6 and 7 are often not recyclable, so check your local website.

Examples include some clamshells, disposable plates and cups, meat trays, plastic bags, pouches and squeeze bottles.

Also avoid including plastics with PVCs. Examples include blister packs, packaging for cosmetics and some food wrap. Because of its chemical composition, PVC can contaminate large batches of plastics in the recycling system, that would otherwise be recyclable.

Shopping bags and other soft plastics like plastic wrap and bubble wrap can’t be recycled, because they can jam sorting machines.

5. BEST PRACTICE: Do your best to purchase non-plastic options. It’s tough because our society has gone whole-hog for plastic solutions. We pretty much have to buy plastic to hold our garbage.

But two easy fixes are:

 
On behalf of Planet Earth, we thank you for your assistance.
 
 
MORE ON RECYCLING

Here are the “recycling mistakes” to avoid.

Here are details on the resin codes, and what your plastics are made from.
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*Plastic resins are created by heating hydrocarbons in a process known as the “cracking process.” Here’s more about them.

Sweet cocktails are delicious, beguiling, and…packed full of sugar.

Stirrings, a pioneering producer of quality cocktail mixes, offers a solution with two new five-calorie cocktail mixers:

 
Now you can enjoy these two top cocktails with no added sugar, no preservatives and no guilt.

Instead of sugar (or corn syrup), the cocktail mixes are flavored with a natural-tasting blend of sucralose and acesulfame potassium.

Otherwise, the ingredients you expect—cranberry juice in the Cosmo, key lime juice in the Margarita, are all natural, and there are no preservatives.

How about 5 Calorie Mixers for Mother’s Day:

 
A 25.4-fluid ounce bottle is $6.99.

Head to your nearest Stirrings retailer (here’s a store locator) or buy them online directly from Stirrings.

Then…bottoms up, with far fewer calories!
 
 
CHECK OUT THE DIFFERENT TYPE OFNON-CALORIC SWEETENERS

[1 & 2] The new five-calorie cocktail mixes. Top, Cosmopolitan; bottom, Margarita (photo courtesy Stirrings).

[1] The Full Circle sushi roll from Bamboo Sushi in Portland, Oregon, places a salad in the center of cut sushi rolls (photo courtesy Bamboo Sushi).

[2] Dress the salad with yuzu, if you can. Yuzu is a delicious citrus that combines the flavors and aromas of lemon, lime and grapefruit (photo courtesy J. Patokal | Wikipedia).

[3] You can find yuzu juice at Asian markets. It is worth every cent (photo Pinterest).

Sushi is one of our favorite foods. Occasionally we make it from scratch; but more often we enjoy it at restaurants, and even get take-out sushi from local markets. Often we get seaweed salad to round out the dish.

So we were especially charmed when we saw this Full Circle Roll from Bamboo Sushi in Portland, Oregon, featuring:

 
We’ve been making it for lunch and light dinners, and especially enjoy it with a cup of genmaicha tea, which is green tea mixed with tiny kernels of kernels of toasted and popped brown rice, giving the tea a nutty, toasty flavor.

We still buy the seaweed salad, and layer it on the plate under either watercress or arugula salad—creating a seaweed salad “surprise.”

The only problem: This dish is so refreshing, we want to eat two of them!
 
 
MAKE YOUR OWN

Our market not only has a good sushi selection, but also sells tuna and salmon in sashimi slices, so it’s easy for us to pull the dish together.

If you don’t have the same access to ingredients, you can buy sushi-quality tuna or salmon from a reliable fish market, and:

 
 
LOVE SUSHI?

Learn more about it—and see delicious sushi pictures—in our Sushi Glossary.
 
 
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*Sushi rice is made with a premium grade Japanese short grain white. The cooked rice is mixed, while still hot, with a mixture of rice vinegar, sugar and salt. The vat of rice is fanned to cool it off.

If you try to mix the rice vinegar mixture into regular cooked rice, it will approximate the flavor of sushi rice, but the rice won’t stick together as the short-grain rice does.