This article appeared in the May 2023 issue of Resource Recycling. Subscribe today for access to all print content.
The U.S. plastic bottle recycling rate was 28.2% in 2021, up 1 percentage point from a year earlier, according to an industry report. The increase in the bottle recycling rate was driven by PET bottles, the data shows. The country recycled about 28.7% of PET bottles in 2021, up 1.6 percentage points from 2020. The HDPE bottle recycling rate was 28.9%, which was roughly flat from the year before. The report, released April 11 by the Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR), the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) and the U.S. Plastics Pact, also found an overall increase in weights of plastic recovered in 2021, reflecting a bounceback from the pandemic dip in 2020. (APR owns Resource Recycling, Inc.) In 2021, 5.08 billion pounds total were recovered for recycling, up 5.8% from the year before. That weight includes bottles, non-bottle rigid plastics, film and other plastic.
This article appeared in the May 2023 issue of Resource Recycling. Subscribe today for access to all print content.