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Bottle-to-bottle recycling in the US and Canada and recycled content in US bottles both hit record highs in 2025. But imported material made up a larger share of RPET consumption than in any previous year, according to new data from the National Association for PET Container Resources (NAPCOR).
The US PET bottle recycling rate also dropped for a second consecutive year, to 29.0% from 30.2% in 2024.
Along with record-low bale prices and plant closures, the 2025 data reinforce that demand and supply are out of step, and that the industry needs economic intervention to ensure its survival, said Lauren Laibach, director of data services at NAPCOR.
“There is a whole layer of economic issues that are evident in the 2025 data and have been part of the industry conversation, but now are being borne out in this data,” she said.
Funding or tax incentives for upgrading sortation and processing facilities would help improve bale quality, she said. With higher yields from curbside bales, reclaimers could reduce their dependence on imports.
“If the curbside quality isn’t very good, it’s much more expensive to turn that into high-quality RPET, especially when the bottle markets are consuming an ever-growing share, and demand is by far strongest in those markets. So you really need high-quality feedstock to feed those markets.”
Content, imports set records
The US and Canada reached a record share for PET recycled into new bottles, at 69%. Average recycled content in US bottles hit an all-time high of 22.9%, up from a revised 20.7% the previous year.
RPET sales to US and Canadian end markets increased 5.6% in 2025, but imports accounted for all of that growth. Imported RPET reached a record 39.1% of total RPET consumption, up 3.6 points from the previous year.
“We’re seeing that additional demand, particularly from bottle markets, is very strong, but we actually have seen declining pounds of US and Canadian reclaimer sales across end markets since 2021,” Laibach said.
The US in particular has seen considerable investment in new pelletizing capacity to feed bottle markets, which require high-quality food-grade resin. “But without growth in washline PET reclamation capacity, we’re going to need to rely on increased RPET imports in order to feed those pelletizing operations and supply the bottle market,” she said.
“In order to keep PET recycling strong in the US, there needs to be strong markets for the recyclers that are actually processing what’s collected here.”
In a statement, Laura Stewart, executive director of NAPCOR, said: “Growing reliance on imported recycled PET undermines the domestic infrastructure needed to keep PET in circulation and limits growth opportunities. Harmonized extended producer responsibility programs, expanded deposit return systems, and federal incentives for recycling infrastructure can help strengthen domestic reclamation capacity and build a more competitive, resilient US recycling industry.”
Policy effects
Laibach said the shift toward bottle markets lines up with state recycled-content mandates. The reclaimer survey doesn’t provide state-level data, but “I certainly think the timing bears out,” she said. Shortly after California passed its minimum PCR content law, NAPCOR data began showing a shift in RPET sales toward bottle markets.
“The legislated content mandates really set a trend in motion,” Laibach said. Even without new deposit return laws or similar legislation, the existing mandates have shown end users that they need higher PCR content in their packaging, she said.
Packaging EPR laws only began implementation in 2025, so it is too early to see their effects in the data, she added. Still, emerging EPR programs and eco-modulation bonuses are helping sustain the momentum.
Collection falls
US bottle collection fell for a second consecutive year, down 3.6% to 1.821 billion pounds. Meanwhile, bottles available for recycling rose 0.6% to 6.286 billion pounds, which pushed the rate down.
The North American collection rate fell to 36.0%, down 3.2 points from the previous year.
NAPCOR measures collection at the point of reclaimer purchase, so the loss of significant US reclamation capacity in 2025 directly reduced collected pounds, Laibach said.
“Given where we measure collection and the fact that regional markets would have been disrupted by shutdowns, which in some cases were quite sudden, a lot of times we don’t really know what upstream impacts may have been from that,” she said. “But I think it’s reasonable to expect there would have been some scrambling, at least for a time.”
Still, the industry adapted, Laibach said. In 2025, D6 and Republic Services started up new plants in Texas and Indianapolis, respectively, though PET washline reclamation capacity saw a net loss for the year.
“To have the decline in pounds collected be so much less percentage-wise than the loss of reclamation capacity demonstrates that the industry was able to adapt and reconfigure itself to meet the new reality,” she said.
Lightweighting of bottles by major beverage brands, which began in 2024, can affect both pounds available and pounds recycled, Laibach said. “But because we know that lighter beverage bottles are associated with higher losses in sortation facilities and yield losses, I think that it’s reasonable to expect that it might have more of an impact on the collection side, relative to pounds available for recycling.”
Eroding consumer confidence in recycling could also be a factor, she said. “It’s really hard to assess to what degree this plays a role in 2025 in particular, but there’s certainly evidence of mistrust in the US recycling system that likely affects participation.”
Overall, “a lot of things could be at play with the decrease in collected pounds,” Laibach said.
For thermoforms, recycling continued to climb, with US and Canadian reclaimers processing 226 million pounds. Total thermoform collection, which includes material exported for recycling, fell 6.4%, from 264 million to 247 million pounds. The drop came from fewer exports, mainly to Mexico, and Laibach said tariff uncertainty may have played a role.
“There was a lot of confusion in 2025, so we certainly can’t rule that out,” she said, adding that PET bottle exports to both Canada and Mexico were also down.
Looking ahead
“From a high-level perspective, the NAPCOR team was kind of bracing ourselves, knowing how many challenges started coming up, as we were living 2025 for the industry,” Laibach said. “So I think a decline in collection and the collection rate was not unexpected, and I think our feeling is that it could have been worse.”
Even so, “it’s a little bit hard to live in the policy momentum and feel excited about what’s coming” when the organization’s data is analyzed on a delay, she said.
