US consumer recycling dips; call grows for legislative support
Iranpolymer/Baspar New statistics show post-consumer plastics recycling falling slightly in the United States as recovery of two flagship resins stumbled in 2022.
A newly issued report from a trio of groups shows the country recycled a little more than 5 billion pounds of post-consumer plastics in 2022, down 71.2 million pounds from the year before.
“Collection is down. Supply is down for recyclers. I think that’s the big thing we have to try to figure out, why is collection down? What are we not doing that can help the consumer put more material in the bin,” said Steve Alexander, CEO of the Association of Plastic Recyclers trade group.
APR, along with the trade group Institut of Scrap Recycling Industries and the U.S. Plastics Pact, issued the report prepared by Stina Inc. The U.S. Plastics Pact is part of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s efforts to create a circular economy for plastics.
Plastics recyclers have to return to some basic messaging about the importance of recycling at a time when people are facing many other challenges coming out of the pandemic, he said.
“We have to do a better job of making it easier for the consumer. They have so much on their minds these days,” Alexander said. “It seems to me this is the last thing on people’s minds.”
PET bottles, the most widely collected plastic in the country, fell by 1.3 percent year-over-year with 1.9 billion pounds recovered for recycling. That’s 25 million pounds below 2021 numbers.
High density polyethylene bottles, which is No. 2 in terms of recycling in the United States, fell by 8.7 percent to 846.8 million pounds for 2022, a decrease of 80.4 million pounds. Those two categories make up more than half of the overall plastics recycling stream for the year.
Nonbottle rigid plastics recovery was 1.1 billion pounds in 2022, up 3.8 percent from 2021, and film also was at 1.1 billion pounds, up 0.4 percent during the same period.
A category called polypropylene and other bottles had a 2022 recovery total of 26.4 million pounds, a decrease of 5.9 percent, or 1.7 million pounds, from 2021 to 2022.
The overall recovery of 5 billion pounds in 2022 was 1.4 percent lower than 2021 numbers, the report states.
The report calculates the U.S. recycling rate for PET bottles at 29 percent for 2022 as an estimated total of 6.6 billion pounds of resin was used in that category.
For HDPE bottles, the recycling rate was 27.1 percent for 2022 based on consumption of 3.13 billion pounds of resin in that category.
The vast majority of the U.S. plastic recovered for recycling — 93.7 percent — went to North America reclaimers in 2022, according to the report.
“We’re not collecting the material that reclaimers need and want,” said Nina Bellucci Butler, CEO of report author Stina.
Recycled resin levels are being impacted mainly by economic pressures, Butler said.
“You are competing with really inexpensive virgin resin. Recyclers are facing all of the headwinds,” she said.
With virgin production continuing to grow worldwide, Butler does not expect the pressure on recyclers to end anytime soon.
With inexpensive virgin plastic available, Butler sees some companies backing off their past commitments to use recycled plastics in their packaging.
“There wasn’t enough brand commitment to use recycled content. There wasn’t enough economic driver to use recycled content when you can buy cheaper virgin,” she said in explaining the recycling decrease.
Butler does not expect the situation to change anytime soon without some sort of legislative intervention that could include moves such as mandated recycled content, extended producer responsibility programs and more bottle bills.
Information from surveys conducted by both Stina and the National Association for PET Container Resources trade group was used in the new report.
The decrease of 71.2 million pounds in post-consumer plastics recovered for recycling in 2022 compares with an increase of 284.6 million pounds between 2021 and 2022.
Of all post-consumer plastics recovered for recycling, bottles made up 55.5 percent of the total in 2022. That’s down from 56.8 percent in 2021. Nonbottle rigid plastics and film each had 22 percent of the share.
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