PET bottle recycling rate rises to 29.2 percent
Posted on November 15th, 2018 by plasticycle
PlastiCycle is proud to help contribute to the increase in domestic plastic recycling!
Jared Paben
The U.S. PET bottle recycling rate inched upward last year, as domestic reclaimers gobbled up the recovered plastic volumes no longer being consumed by foreign buyers.
The recycling rate was estimated at 29.2 percent in 2017, up from 28.4 percent the year before, according to a report from The National Association for PET Container Resources (NAPCOR) and The Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR). The report was released today.
“Demand for RPET continues to be healthy, and we have capacity and infrastructure to meet those needs,” stated Tom Busard, NAPCOR chairman, chief procurement officer for Plastipak Packaging and president of Clean Tech, Plastipak’s recycling affiliate. “However, we have more work to do to improve the quality and volume of PET that goes to our reclaimers.”
The 2017 report notes a continuation of a trend of decreasing recovered PET exports. Last year, U.S. exports of the plastic constituted the lowest export fraction since 2004, at only 16 percent of total collection. U.S. reclaimers were able to take up the slack, according to the report.
“Total post-consumer bottles recycled and used by reclaimers was supported by strong domestic demand for the material,” according to a press release.
There were shifts in usage by different U.S. and Canadian manufacturers, however. For example, in 2017, total RPET going into fiber, sheet, thermoforms and strapping increased, but the weight going into new bottles decreased.
Steve Alexander, president of APR, noted the keys to continued growth are both increased end-user demand for RPET and designing bottles for recyclability.
“Despite challenges with increased contamination and demand markets, the RPET industry continues to demonstrate its strength in terms of consistent domestic material purchases and investment in enhanced processing capacity,” he stated in the release. “The industry is superbly situated to work with all segments of the demand market to meet their sustainability challenges.”
The 2017 recycling rate signals a halt to the slide experienced a year earlier. Tough markets battered the industry in 2016, leading to a number of plants going off-line, a fact that helped contribute to a lower overall PET recycling rate.
The annual analysis has been produced by NAPCOR for 23 years. This is the 13th year NAPCOR and APR have worked jointly to produce it.
In other PET news, CarbonLite today announced the signing of a contract with Nestlé Waters North America, allowing the PET reclaimer to move forward building a 200,000-square-foot plant in Pennsylvania.
