The first report from The Recycling Partnership’s Polypropylene Recycling Coalition set a goal of increasing the U.S. PP recycling rate in the next two years. | Afanasiev Andrii/Shutterstock
The Recycling Partnership’s Polypropylene Recycling Coalition has given out $15 million in 60 grants, improving PP recycling access for 48 million people in 26 states, according to its first annual report.
That’s about 64 million new pounds of PP recycled each year, according to the document, and the coalition hopes to increase the U.S. PP recycling rate by 5 percentage points by the end of 2026. That rate is currently about 8%.
The Polypropylene Recycling Coalition was established in 2020 and, similar to TRP’s other material-specific coalitions, awards grants to materials recovery facilities, secondary sorters and reclaimers to increase PP acceptance and improve capture. To date, it has increased community recycling program acceptance of PP by 11%, according to the report.
One grantee is the Waste Commission of Scott County, Iowa, which in 2023 added an optical sorter focused on PP with support from the coalition. That upgrade increased the amount of PP the MRF captured and shipped from about 90,000 pounds in 2023 to 634,000 pounds in the first half of 2024.
“While we celebrate this progress, we know there is significant opportunity to continue to expand the demand for recycled polypropylene, spur investments in access, education and infrastructure and create a more robust market for this versatile material,” said Brittany LaValley, vice president of materials advancement at TRP, in a press release.
To increase the rate over the next two years, the coalition plans to increase community recycling program acceptance of the resin and continue to work to have PP included on covered materials lists in states with extended producer responsibility for packaging programs, as it has been in California and Oregon.
“Join us as we strive to drive a 5% increase in the national recycling rate for polypropylene by the end of 2026, with a strategic focus on meeting recycling mandates in West Coast policy states,” the authors wrote. “Accomplishing this requires deploying $10 million throughout 2025, part of a comprehensive strategy to deploy $55 million to modernize recycling infrastructure and expand polypropylene capture nationwide.”
To date, the coalition has received over $43 million in funding requests, the report added.