Too Bright A Green: a rant.

 Look, I'm all for recycling, I really am. I even bring plastic bottles home from holiday so they can go in the municipal recycling bin.

I would have said that there was no limit to my enthusiasm until I saw some words embossed on a plastic yogurt pot top:

FIFTY PER CENT RECYCLED PET

it said.

And I realised that things really can go too far.

Thing not to do today: recycle a PET. Luckily in this case PET does not refer to an animal you imagine to be your friend, but to polyethelene terephthalate, a commonly-used plastic. The stuff is reckoned to be fairly harmless to humans as long as it doesn't get hot, when it can leak antimony.

Sails are also made out of it. 

Poly- means many; aithein means to burn or shine; -ene is a word-ending to do with stuff with hydrogen and carbon in it; tere comes from terebinthos, the turpentine tree, and phthalate comes from naphtha, which means wet. 

All these words are Greek.