Thirty years ago, recycling of any kind was just getting off its feet in the United States. At the time, if you mentioned recycling to most people, they thought of newspapers. But to a woman in Sauk county Wisconsin, a trip to Japan got her to thinking of recycling plastics. Molly Zantow started her crusade with a simple question to a milk producer. Molly asked what happens to flawed milk jugs when they come down the line. She discovered that they were thrown back to be melted down and recycled through the system. From this question she proceeded to founding her own recycling business.
Molly even helped develop a way of easily determining what kind of plastic a container was made of. The triangle with a number inside was her idea. When you're trying to decide whether or not a container can be recycled, look for that triangle. If the number inside is 1 or 2, you can recycle it. Otherwise, the plastic isn't recyclable.
You can hear her own words on this video at madison.com.