U.S. PET bottle recycling was at 29 percent for 2022, continuing what has now become a decadelong trend for that segment of the plastics recycling market.
The National Association for PET Container Resources takes a look at PET bottle recycling every year, and the 2022 PET Recycling Report shows a 29 percent recycling rate for PET bottles in the United States and a 37.8 percent recycling rate for PET bottles in North America.
The rate has held steady around 30 percent, give or take, for the past decade, Middletown, Wis.-based NAPCOR said.
"There is a growing demand for recycled content from manufacturers within both the food/beverage and nonfood bottle categories," said Laura Stewart, NAPCOR executive director, said in a statement.
"This is continued evidence that packaging made from PET can be reused and repurposed and has a key role to play in the circular economy."
The 2022 U.S. rate of 29 percent fell from 30.3 percent posted for 2021. The rate fell to 37.8 percent in North America, down from 38.4 percent in 2021, NAPCOR said.
The trade group also indicated the report shows a 15-percent increase in recycled content used in new U.S. bottles for 2022.
NAPCOR warned that there needs to be significant increases in PET collection to match recycled content demands in the future.
To reach 25 percent recycled content by 2025 in all U.S. PET bottles — a common goal stated by consumer goods companies — NAPCOR said recyclers would need 85 percent more than what was collected in 2022.
In releasing the latest PET bottle recycling information, NAPCOR also indicated the group’s 2021 numbers were revised after the trade group issued initial numbers last December for that year.
Stewart explained:
“In terms of 2021 and our restatement of numbers— as you can imagine, each year when we dive into the data we find ways of going deeper into the analysis, and the methodology becomes more sophisticated over time,” she said in an email.
“We revisited the 2021 data with new perspective, and while changes in collection were negligible the denominator did meaningfully shift. Since our findings moved the collection rate percentage by a point and a half, we felt we needed to adjust,” Stewart said.
NAPCOR previously indicated a recycling rate of 28.6 percent for 2021, up from 27.1 percent in 2020 when numbers fell due to the pandemic.
The latest numbers, the executive director indicated, show a continued shift for recycled PET into bottle applications from fiber use.
“Since 2017, you can see the steep growth in the bottle categories — we think due to a combination of both legislative and voluntary commitments,” Stewart said in the email.