The U.S. EPA’s recent recycling infrastructure report was largely focused on the investments needed to improve the system but also included new recycling rate estimates for specific materials, some of the first data updates the agency has released since its last Facts and Figures report several years ago.
The Assessment of the U.S. Recycling System: Financial Estimates to Modernize Material Recovery Infrastructure came out of a 2021 directive from Congress for the EPA to collect data on residential recycling and estimate the financial investments needed to modernize the U.S. recycling system.
It included 2019 generation and recycling tonnages for PET bottles, PET rigids, HDPE bottles, aluminum, steel, cardboard, paper and glass – and the rates, in many cases, differ sharply from other estimates.
The report estimated recycling rates of:
- PET bottles: 23.2%.
- PET rigids: 5.9%.
- HDPE bottles: 22.7%.
- Aluminum: 36.9%.
- Steel: 31.2%.
- Cardboard: 53.5%.
- Paper: 29.6%.
- Glass: 41.4%.
- Total: 38.9%.
Those generation and recycling volumes were estimated using the 50 States of Recycling report, prepared by Eunomia for the Ball Corporation, as well as the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey and state waste management reports.
The report noted that the 50 States of Recycling report from 2021 was applied to state-level population data from the 2019 American Community Survey. However, data for paper generation and recycling were unavailable for most states, so the EPA estimated missing values using the difference between average per-capita generation and recycling for states that reported data for paper recycling.
“It is important to note that the state paper generation data are self-reported, not independently verified, collected at irregular intervals, and contain varying levels of detail about community recycling programs,” the report’s authors added.
Terry Webber, American Forest and Paper Association vice president of industry affairs, said that language in the EPA report raises “questions about the accuracy of their new recycling rate statistics.”
“Facts and data matter, especially when it comes to measuring and tracking the success of paper recycling over time,” he said, adding that “AF&PA has closely monitored paper recycling rates for decades.”
Past estimates
However, looking at other reports that estimated 2019 recycling rates for specific materials, there’s a wide spread between the numbers.
The AF&PA estimated a cardboard recycling rate of 92% and a mixed paper recycling rate of 66.2% in 2019, while a study from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory estimated a paper recycling rate of 38%.
The EPA itself has not released an update to its Facts and Figures report since 2020, which covered 2018 data. In that report, it estimated a 68% paper recycling rate for 2018.
Fiber industry analysts from Bloomberg Intelligence and Circular Ventures have also presented different, lower OCC and paper recycling rate estimates.
AF&PA changed how it calculates recycling rates last November, Webber added, “to reflect continuously evolving global economic, supply chain, and trade flows.”
The new rate is “what we believe is the most thorough and fact-based U.S. recycling rate possible with currently available data,” Webber noted, which reflects AF&PA’s “commitment to utilize the best data available to support industry investments and guide our efforts to recover and recycle more paper and paper packaging products in the U.S.”
Looking at plastics, NAPCOR and the Association of Plastic Recyclers published a 2019 PET bottle recycling rate of 27.9% and a total HDPE bottle recycling rate of 30.9%.
NAPCOR’s Director of Data Services Lauren Laibach said the rates differ due to differing methodologies.
“Previously, the EPA relied on industry data to generate their annual ‘facts and figures,’ but this effort was discontinued,” she said. “The recent EPA report states that they rely in large part on Eunomia’s 2021 The 50 States of Recycling report, which emphasizes what Eunomia calls the “real” (net) recycling rate, instead of the collection (gross) rate that is most commonly used to characterize and track recycling performance.”
Meanwhile, NAPCOR calculates both, Laibach said. In addition, Eunomia relies on data collected and reported by individual states, rather than nationwide industry data, and “waste characterization studies are sometimes the only basis for arriving at individual state recycling rates.”
“Because recycling takes place through complex systems, and the point at which data is available affects measurement of recycling performance,” it can be complicated to arrive at a nationwide recycling rate, she added. Setting standards or best practices to create consistency across material reporting could help, Laibach noted, but “this would require cooperation among many different stakeholders, and it could be tough to arrive at consensus given the complexity of the issues.”
While the Glass Packaging Institute did not have numbers for 2019, it estimated a recycling rate of 31.3% for glass food and beverage packaging containers in 2018.The Aluminum Association published a consumer recycling rate for aluminum cans of 46.1% in 2019, higher than the EPA’s new estimate.
Editor’s note: This story has been updated with statements from AF&PA and NAPCOR.
