Just in case you were wondering, a plastic, supermarket-sized grocery bag holds about eight pounds of bottle caps. These were all picked up off the beaches of New Jersey, and they are all going to be recycled.

Estee Lauder, parent company of Aveda, is collecting the caps, melting them down, and turning them into new caps for their products. This is significant because caps are generally not recycled like the bottles they occupy. The reason? Caps are typically a different number plastic than the bottle – usually #5 or #2 for caps; #1 for bottles.

You can help, more here Kick the cap out of plastic!

Special thanks to Robert Fitzgerald at Estee Lauder, Clean Ocean Action in NJ and Surfrider Foundation activists Joe Mairo, Dave Storch, and Bill Rosenblatt.