It's been 30 years since two employees of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality — Kevin Tuerff and Valerie Davis — created the first Texas Recycles Day. Three years later, the event went national and now America Recycles Day is every year on Nov. 15.
The national focus on recycling showed an early payoff. Americans recycled 17.2 percent of plastic bottles and containers in 1994. Ten years later, that number rose to about 21 percent. But growth has been difficult in recent years, even falling since reaching a high in 2016.
Earlier this year, the Association of Plastic Recyclers, the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries and the U.S. Plastics Pact released a study prepared by Stina Inc. that showed Americans recycled 5 billion pounds of plastics in 2022 — down 71.2 million pounds from 2021.
PET bottle recycling fell 1.3 percent between 2022 and 2021, while high density polyethylene bottle recycling was down 8.7 percent, as Plastics News' Jim Johnson reported.
Just why those recycling numbers have stalled is a complex issue, with plenty of finger-pointing to go around. There's a lack of recycling infrastructure that creates barriers for consumers to return packaging; low virgin resin prices mean there's less incentive for companies to use recycled material; and some environmental groups eager to call out "greenwashing" by companies end up turning some consumers into skeptics who no longer believe recycling works at all.
There are efforts to counter negative messaging — such as the Recycling Is Real project — along with more emphasis on programs that would encourage more recycling through bottle deposit rules and extended producer responsibility. There are new local mandates and bans and, of course, a looming deadline to create a global plastics treaty. Each one of those projects will require more work.
The existence of America Recycles Day shouldn't be seen as a celebration of how far the U.S. has come since 1994, but instead a reminder of the work needed to turn that statement into a reality.
