The United States is failing when it comes to recycling plastic. According to a new analysis, U.S. households generated an estimated 51 million tons of plastic waste in 2021, but only 2.4 million tons -- or 5% -- was recycled.
The environmental nonprofit Greenpeace USA says the data provides more proof that plastic recycling is a "myth," The Boston Globe reported. "Recycling is never going to solve the plastic waste crisis," Lisa Ramsden, senior plastics campaigner for Greenpeace USA, told the outlet. "There's simply too much plastic, and it's just not practical to recycle most of it." The report found that although individuals are filling their household recycling bins with plastic items, most of those items never make it through the recycling process and instead get thrown away.
According to the report, "no type of plastic packaging in the U.S. meets the definition of recyclable" even though the vast majority display the "chasing arrows" logos indicating they can be recycled.
"Only PET #1 and HDPE #2 plastic bottles and jugs are widely accepted by the 375 material recovery facilities in operation in the U.S. today," per the report. Additionally, acceptance of a plastic item by a facility does not mean that the item will be recycled. Many accepted items often get disposed of at facilities because "there is no end-market buyer," according to the report.
PET #1 includes water, soft drink and salad dressing bottles, cookie trays and salad domes, while HDPE #2 includes milk jugs, freezer bags, juice bottles, shampoo bottles, and detergent and chemical bottles.
That means all other items you might put in your bin likely go straight to the trash at recycling facilities -- including cosmetic containers (PVC #3), grocery bags and squeeze bottles (LDPE #4), microwavable dishes, coffee pods and fast food cups (PP #5), cutlery, water cups and coffee cup lids (PS #6), baby bottles and water cooler bottles (OTHER #7), and hot drink cups, take-out containers and protective packaging for fragile items (EPS #6).
Industry standards dictate that an item must have a 30% recycling rate to receive the "recyclable" classification. The report indicates that the most common plastics in the U.S. that are often considered recyclable -– PET #1 and HDPE #2 -– fall well below the threshold, only achieving reprocessing rates of 20.9% and 10.3%, respectively. For every other type of plastic, the reprocessing rate is less than 5%.
"Corporations like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé, and Unilever have worked with industry front groups to promote plastic recycling as the solution to plastic waste for decades. But the data is clear: practically speaking, most plastic is just not recyclable," Ramsden said in a statement.
According to the report, mechanical and chemical recycling of plastic waste "has largely failed and will always fail" because plastic waste is extremely difficult to collect, virtually impossible to sort for recycling, environmentally harmful to reprocess, often made of and contaminated by toxic materials, and not economical to recycle.
"Single-use plastics are like trillions of pieces of confetti spewed from retail and fast food stores to over 330 million U.S. residents across more than 3 million square miles each year. It's simply not possible to collect the vast quantity of these small pieces of plastic sold to U.S. consumers annually," Ramsden said. "More plastic is being produced, and an even smaller percentage of it is being recycled. The crisis just gets worse and worse, and, without drastic change, will continue to worsen as the industry plans to triple plastic production by 2050."
Plastic recycling was estimated to have declined to about 5–6% in 2021, down from a high of 9.5% in 2014 and 8.7% in 2018. At that time, the U.S. exported millions of tons of plastic waste to China and counted it as recycled even though much of it was burned or dumped, according to the report.
The report notes that the high recycling rates of post-consumer paper, cardboard and metals in the U.S. prove that recycling can be an effective way to reclaim valuable natural material resources. Plastic recycling in particular has failed, the report says, because the thousands of types of synthetic plastic materials produced are fundamentally not recyclable.
The report urges companies to take several additional steps to mitigate the systemic problems associated with plastic recycling, including phasing out single-use plastics, committing to standardized reusable packaging, and adopting a Global Plastics Treaty to help set international standards.
