Science desk
< June 3	<< May \| June \| Jul >>	June 5 >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Science Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

June 4[edit]

UVPE?[edit]

I have a translucent white Nalgene-brand bottle that has a recycling symbol with 2 inside the triangle and "UVPE" below it instead of the expected "HDPE".

The product page is here,[1] and says it is made of HDPE.

Normally I would just dismiss this as a marketing neologism (UV resistant PE?) but seeing it as part of the official recycling symbol confuses me. Don't they have rules for that sort of thing or can the manufacturer just make new recycling symbols up?

I found our articles on Recycling symbol, Recycling codes (those two really should be merged into one article) and Resin identification code, but none of them mention UVPE.

I even searched for a MSDS, (Example:[2]) which was completely useless. Good to know that my water bottle isn't on the Chemical Weapons Convention List and that I should keep my water bottle "away from food and drink".

To confuse things further, [3] uses "UVPE" to describe Polyurethane instead of Polyethylene.

Does anyone know what the UV in UVPE means and whether there are any regulations concerning making up new recycling symbols? 2600:1700:D0A0:21B0:541C:3075:3AF9:5BBA (talk) 16:04, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Googling UVPE yields various items, including [4], which says "The milky colored old style Nalgene bottles are UVPE which is HDPE treated to resist UV degradation." --←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 17:44, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

It should be noted that MSDS and SDS are often very product specific, as in specific to whatever purchase or lot they were ordered and shipped with. For many properties, this isn't of much consequence. Unless something like purity has changed significantly, the boiling point is likely to be the same across all SDS for a given compound or material. Some properties, however, will easily differ from SDS to SDS for the same product, and a big example of this is food safety. Your SDS sheet is from a supplier of UVPE, possibly one supplying it to the maker of the water bottle, but possibly not (and it doesn't really matter either way). It specifically notes that vapors may be released upon heating. This says to me that it isn't certified as food grade. Now, if prepared and treated properly, such as by heating to expel any remaining volatile organics that are dangerous, it may be possible to make the UVPE certifiable as food grade. So, the proper SDS to look at would be the SDS from the water bottle manufacturer, which will differ from the SDS from the UVPE supplier, as the bottle manufacturer should have done stuff to make it food grade. This is why I can use a plastic bucket that a bakery had received a shipment of flour to grow vegetables in a garden, but not a bucket made of the same material from a hardware store. The bucket for a shipment of flour was intentionally made to be food grade, while the hardware store bucket is not meant to be used with food, so they didn't go to the added expense of making it food grade. --OuroborosCobra (talk) 17:00, 8 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]