Susan Collins
The Container Recycling Institute (CRI) commends PepsiCo for recent statements from Vice President Roberta Barbieri supporting the value of bottle bills for producing clean materials for bottle-to-bottle recycling. However, it is important to point out inaccuracies in Ms. Barbieri’s statements, particularly about the cost-effectiveness of bottle bills (container deposit laws).
While prices for recovered PET and HDPE have remained steady or increased, post-consumer film values continue to nose-dive.
China’s import policy changes are straining recovered plastics export markets, particularly impacting mixed rigids. Recycling companies have been forced to stockpile and even landfill the materials, while numerous municipal programs have stopped accepting mixed plastics.
Organizations raising $150 million to prevent ocean plastics in Southeast Asia say the region will present challenges wholly different from those in the U.S. Two groups recently offered new details on the goals and logistics of the effort.
Michael Stephen, Oxo-biodegradable Plastics Association
Recyclers depend for their survival on demand for plastic products made with their recyclate, but plastic is under attack from environmentalists, and line after line – and sometimes whole factories – are closing.
Over the past month, recovered PET and film values have fallen, but HDPE grades have seen slight increases.
Nina Bellucci Butler of More Recycling states correctly in a Sept. 27 article in Plastics Recycling Update that “we have capacity to purchase HDPE, PET, PP and other resins. We don’t have the capacity to take the material from the MRF [and] further segregate it so we can get those discrete resins to market.”
