PET recycling steady, but facing shortfall as demand grows

PET container recycling in the United States continued a years-old trend of essentially holding steady in 2018, according to new statistics.

But that pattern is not going to be enough to satisfy growing demand for recycled PET in the years ahead, according to the head of the National Association for PET Container Resources.

NAPCOR is out with new data that shows PET container recycling was 28.9 percent in 2018 compared with 29.2 percent in 2017.

NAPCOR Executive Director Darrel Collier described the year-over-year numbers as being essentially flat, a trend that's been taking place for the past decade or so when it comes to PET recycling.

While the overall recycling rate for PET containers has stayed steady, the amount of the material being handled by domestic recyclers continues to rise. U.S. reclaimers purchased 1.67 billion pounds of the material in 2018, up from 1.44 billion pounds in 2017, an increase of 16 percent.

This increase in domestic processing comes as the export market has severely contracted with China's decision to stop importing a wide variety of recycled commodities, including plastics, through a program called National Sword.

About 140 million pounds of used PET, some 8 percent of the total collected, was sold to export markets in 2018. That's the lowest "export fraction" since 2000, NAPCOR reported.

"We are at about a decade of what I'd call essentially the same recycling rate, right at 30 percent. … Of course, that's with a consistently growing market. So there's more being recycled, but there's also more bottles on the shelf. So the numerator and denominator have been going up. So, essentially, we're in a flat recycling rate," Collier said.

NAPCOR, in revealing the new numbers, said increasing the PET recycling rate is imperative to allowing brand owners to meet their stated goals of increasing recycled content in their product containers.

"If we do not move this needle, there is no way these commitments can be met. It has to be addressed or the brand houses are not going to be able to come anywhere close to their commitments," Collier said.

The full 2018 PET Recycling Report can be purchased through a link at www.napcor.com.