From the Earth to Your Home and Beyond
April is Earth Month, and there’s no better way to celebrate than finding ways to protect our planet! One of the biggest threats facing our oceans, aside from warming temperatures from greenhouse gases, is plastic waste.
Many companies tout products made with recycled plastic or post-consumer material reclaimed from waterways, but recycling takes care of only a small fraction of plastic waste. In fact, according to a 2021 US Environmental Protection Agency report, the US recycled less than 10 percent of plastic waste in 2018, with almost 76 percent headed to a landfill. And in San Francisco, the Environment Department is transparent about where the city’s recyclable waste goes. In the second half of 2025, for example, plastic waste was sold to markets in the US and Southeast Asia. Pre-consumer policies that regulate plastics by businesses can make the biggest difference in plastic waste, and a number of solutions have been proposed that can reduce plastic waste. Politicians we elect can help effect change. But when we’re not casting ballots for candidates who promise environmentally friendly policies, we can vote with our dollars and do our part to cut down on plastic packaging.
The idea of our kids inheriting huge landfills, oceans, and rivers full of plastic—not to mention the microplastic particles in our soil and air—is a bleak prospect, but it doesn’t have to be their destiny.
In this post, we’ll talk about how plastic bottles are made, and offer a creative activity for kids to chart the journey of a plastic bottle from the earth to the factory to the landfill. Then we’ll offer suggestions to bring those ideas home by setting kids on a mission to survey and gather data on the plastics they use in a week. Armed with that information, the whole family can brainstorm ways to reduce it.
Activity: Draw the “Life Cycle” of a Plastic Bottle
Durable, convenient, and virtually shatterproof, plastic containers for food, beverages, and other consumer products line our grocery store and pantry shelves. Today, most plastics are synthetic, but the first plastics were made of natural materials like milk, and new bio-based plastics are easier to find as technology advances.
The plastic bottles and jars most often found in our homes (think condiments, nut butters, takeout containers, and yogurt cups) are stamped with a numbered code from 1 to 7, but not all of those are recyclable. Plastics labeled 1 through 3 and number 5 are commonly accepted by many municipal recycling programs, and San Francisco even accepts plastic utensils in the blue bins. No matter what number your container shows, it most likely started out the same way if it was manufactured stateside. Nearly 99 percent of plastics are made from fossil fuels. Here in the US, most plastic comes not from crude oil refining but from natural gas, spurred by the fracking boom.
So how is a plastic bottle made, and what effects does its journey have on the environment? Here are the kid-friendly basics to explain what happens from extracting the raw material, to manufacturing the container, and then to your recycling bin and beyond. Use these steps as prompts for kids to make a comic strip or storyboard of the process, incorporating cutouts or drawing the steps from scratch.
1. Fossil fuels like natural gas or crude oil, materials millions of years old, are removed from deep in the earth. They are called “fossil fuels” because they formed from the remains of ancient marine life called diatoms, microscopic creatures that lived before dinosaurs existed. When they are burned, fossil fuels release carbon dioxide and other gases,called greenhouse gases, into the earth’s atmosphere. These gases trap the sun’s heat in the atmosphere, causing the planet to warm. Companies remove these materials by drilling or from a process called fracking, where a liquid is pushed into a rock called shale to force the oil or gas out.
2. Pipelines on land or near the shore move these materials to places called refineries.
3. At the refinery, the oil and gas are processed, or changed, into a form that can be used to heat homes or to power cars and other machines. Ethane, a chemical compound called a hydrocarbon because it is made of two natural elements called hydrogen and carbon, is also found. This substance is heated to very high temperatures to change its molecules into something called ethylene, which is used to make plastics.
4. Ethylene is processed into polyethylene, poly meaning “many.” Polyethylene is made up of long chains of the hydrogen and carbon molecules. Polyethylene is what most plastics, including plastic bottles and plastic wrap, are made of. Pellets of polyethylene start as a colorless material, but color can be added to it when it is made into bottles or other products at the next step.
5. The pellets of polyethylene are sold to food packaging manufacturers and other companies. The pellets travel by truck or boat, using more fossil fuels to get to the plastic factory.
6. Once the pellets arrive at the factory, they are combined with other materials to create plastic products. The manufacturers melt the pellets down and pour the thermoplastic (therm means “heat”) into shapes like bottles and jars that can be filled with things we use every day, like peanut butter and soap. Once the plastic bottles and jars are cooled, they are sold or transferred to bottling plants or food manufacturers, traveling again by truck or by boat, using even more fossil fuels to get where they need to go.
7. Plastic bottles and jars are filled with food, beverages, and other products that are sold in stores.
8. After people buy and use what’s in the bottle, the empty plastic container can end up in many places, depending on what they do:
a. If the bottle is placed in a recycling bin, it can end up in a recycling facility, where it is sorted according to the type of plastic it’s made from. After that, the recycling facility can sell the used plastic to more companies for turning into new plastic bottles. Some of these companies are far away, and the used plastic bottles must travel again by ship or by truck, again using fossil fuels. Unfortunately, most plastic is not recycled, and the plastics that are recycled can’t be turned into new bottles forever, as the plastic continues to weaken each time it’s processed. The rest end up in landfills, where it can take hundreds of years or more to break down. When it breaks down, the particles become smaller and smaller pieces called microplastics. These plastics are sometimes tiny enough to float in the air.
b. If the bottle is thrown in the trash, it can end up in a landfill or in the ocean, where it can end up hurting marine life like seals and whales and seabirds.
Conduct a Home Plastics Survey
Now that you know how plastic bottles are made and what can happen when they break down, it’s time to start looking around to see how to reduce single-use plastics at home. Ask kids to look in the cupboards and the bathroom to find nonreusable plastic bottles and jars that contain everyday items and to make a list of them.
Over the next week, ask kids to keep a log of all the plastics that get thrown in the recycling bin or trash bin. When the week is over, have a family meeting to discuss the findings and ask these questions:
- Which items could be replaced with glass bottles or reusable plastic containers if glass is too risky for the littlest kids?
- Which items can be purchased in bulk and refilled at a local grocery store or a zero-waste shop? (Some stores, like Rainbow Grocery, will let you bring your own container for most items and weigh it to avoid using new plastic baggies or tubs.)
- Can any of these items, such as salad dressing or nut butters, be made at home and stored in a jar instead of purchased?
- Are any items unnecessary (e.g., plastic straws or coffee stirrers for the adults in the house)?
Once you’ve answered these as a family, you can make a plan to phase out any single-use plastics and replace them with more sustainable options.
We hope your child was inspired to learn more about the environment as a way to celebrate Earth Month! For more fun, enriching projects they can do outside the classroom, sign them up for one of STEMful’s programs, like our afterschool activities or school break camps.
Footnotes:
1 Quoted in “U.S. Recycling Economy,” NIST Engineering Laboratory, updated November 15, 2024, https://www.nist.gov/el/applied-economics-office/manufacturing/circular-economy/plastic-recycling.
2 “This Is Where San Francisco’s Recyclables Go,” San Francisco Environment Department, January 6, 2026, https://www.sfenvironment.org/blog/where-san-franciscos-recyclables-go.
3 Andrea Schnitzer, “Plastic Pollution Is a Major Problem in the U.S., but Solutions Exist,” Pew Charitable Trusts, February 6, 2026, https://www.pew.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/2026/02/10/plastic-pollution-is-a-major-problem-in-the-us-but-solutions-exist.
4 Renée Sharp, “Hidden Fossil Fuels: Plastic Production Drives Climate Change,” NRDC, April 23, 2024, https://www.nrdc.org/bio/renee-sharp/hidden-fossil-fuels-plastic-production-drives-climate-change.
5 “How Much Oil Is Used to Make Plastic?,” U.S. Energy Information Administration, accessed March 10, 2026, https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=34&t=6.
6 “Oil and Petroleum Products Explained,” U.S. Energy Information Administration, last updated June 12, 2023,