New research by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology claims PET bottle recycling rates would more than triple through implementation of a national bottle bill.
"In the United States, [PET] bottle collection rates have not increased in a decade. Recycling rates remain abysmal while industry commitments and policy targets escalate the demand for recycled plastics," reads the abstract from a new article in the Journal of Industrial Ecology. "We find that a nationwide DRS (deposit return system) can increase PET bottle recycling rates from 24 percent to 82 percent."
A group of four MIT researchers — R. Basuhi, Karan Bhuwalka, Richard Roth and Elsa A. Olivetti — authored the study titled "Evaluating strategies to increase PET bottle recycling in the United States."
"With stability in demand, we estimate that this PET bottle recycling system can achieve 65 percent bottle-to-bottle circularity, at a net cost of $360 per tonne of PET recycled," the article's abstract states. A tonne, also known as a metric ton, is 2,200 pounds.
"A message that we have found in a number of cases in the recycling space is that if you do the right work to support policies that think about both the demand but also the supply," then significant improvements are possible, said Olivetti in an article published on the MIT website about the journal article, published July 3. "You have to think about the response and the behavior of multiple actors in the system holistically to be viable."
Ten states currently have bottle bills. The idea of a national bottle bill has been discussed for years, but many in the industry doubt federal legislation will happen soon.