Plastic bag makers commit to 20 percent recycled content by 2025

The plastic bag industry on Jan. 30 unveiled a voluntary commitment to boost recycled content in retail shopping bags to 20 percent by 2025 as part of a broader sustainability initiative.

Under the plan, the industry's main U.S. trade group is rebranding itself as the American Recyclable Plastic Bag Alliance and is beefing up support for consumer education and setting a target that 95 percent of plastic shopping bags be reused or recycled by 2025.

The campaign comes as plastic bag makers have faced substantial political pressure — the number of states with bans or restrictions on bags ballooned last year from two in January to eight when the year ended.

Industry officials said their program is not a direct response to the state bans, but they acknowledge public questions urging them to do more.

"This has been a discussion through the industry for a while now to set some aspirational goals of recycled content," Matt Seaholm, executive director of the ARPBA, formerly known as the American Progressive Bag Alliance, said. "This is us putting a positive foot forward. You know, often times people will get the question, 'Well, what are you guys doing as an industry?'"

The commitment from Washington-based ARPBA includes a gradual increase starting at 10 percent recycled content in 2021 and rising to 15 percent in 2023. Seaholm thinks the industry will exceed those targets.

"I think it's safe to assume, especially with ongoing efforts from retailers asking for recycled content to be part of the bags, I think we're probably going to beat these numbers," Seaholm said. "We've already had some conversations with retailers that really like this, that really like the idea of promoting recycled content on their bags as part of a commitment to sustainability."

The recycled content levels are exactly the same as was called for last summer by the group Recycle More Bags, a coalition of governments, companies and environmental groups.

That group, however, wanted the levels mandated by governments, arguing that voluntary commitments are an "unlikely driver for real change."

Seaholm said the plastic bag makers oppose having commitments written in law, but he indicated some flexibility if a government wants to require recycled content.

"If a state decides that they want to require 10 percent recycled content or even 20 percent recycled content, it's not going to be something we fight," Seaholm said, "but it's not going to be something we actively promote either.

"If a state wants to do it, we're happy to have that conversation … because it does do the exact same thing we're talking about doing here, and that's promote an end use for that recycled content. And that's a big part of our commitment, the promotion of end markets," he said.

A 20 percent recycled content level for plastic bags is also what's recommended for model bag ban or fee laws by the environmental group Surfrider Foundation in a toolkit it developed for activists, said Jennie Romer, legal associate at the foundation's Plastic Pollution Initiative.

Surfrider, however, calls for mandating post-consumer resin in bags, as California did in its 2016 plastic bag law that set a 20 percent level of recycled content in plastic bags allowed under its legislation, Romer said. That rose to 40 percent recycled content this year in California.

Seaholm said the ARPBA plan does not specify using post-consumer plastic, arguing that post-industrial plastic is also good. And it's not necessarily a direct bag-to-bag recycling program — the recycled resin could come from other film like pallet stretch wrap, he said.

"We don't see a big difference whether you're taking post-consumer or post-industrial. Either way you're keeping stuff out of the landfill," Seaholm said. "That's what's most important."

He said currently recycled content in plastic bags is less than 10 percent.

Seaholm said that to meet the 20 percent recycled content requirement, it's likely the U.S. plastic bag recycling rate will have to rise.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency figures say that 12.7 percent of plastic bags, sacks and wraps were recycled in 2016, the last year figures are available.

"To get to the final number, to get to 20 percent recycled content across the entire country, yes, we need to do a better job of the store take-back programs, and eventually, if curbside comes online," he said. "Either way, [we need to be] collecting more plastic film polyethylene in order to recycle it."

There are challenges, though. A July report from the American Chemistry Council, for example, noted a sharp drop of more than 20 percent in recycling of plastic film in 2017, as China ramped up restrictions on waste imports.

Seaholm said the bag industry doesn't want the recycling rate to fall, but he acknowledged it's challenging because bag recycling is very dependent on consumers taking bags to store drop-off points. Most curbside recycling programs don't accept bags because they gum up machinery at sorting facilities, although there are pilot programs to try to solve that problem.

The ARPBA program includes consumer education, efforts to increase store take-back programs and a commitment to work with retailers to include clearer language for consumers around how bags should be recycled.

Seaholm said he worried that the proliferation of bag bans in states like New York could hurt recycling if stores stop offering drop-off locations, and he singled out a new law in Vermont that starts this year.

"In Vermont, for instance, with what their law does, I don't know if stores will continue to have store take-back programs," he said. "Anytime you ban a product, you do take away that stream for recycling."

Still, he expressed confidence that the industry will meet the commitments.

"We're going to make the commitment; we'll figure out a way to do it," Seaholm said. "We still think, assuming that half the country doesn't all of a sudden decide to ban plastic bags like Vermont did, we're going to be able to hit these numbers."

The ARPBA plan also sets a target that 95 percent of bags will be recycled or reused by 2025. It estimates that 90 percent of plastic bags currently are either recycled or reused.

It bases that calculation on two numbers: the EPA's 12-13 percent bag recycling rate, and an estimate by Quebec's provincial recycling authority that 77-78 percent of plastic shopping bags are reused, often as trash can liners.

Getting from 90 percent diversion of bags now to 95 percent could be challenging, Seaholm said.

"This is a goal that's not going to be the easiest to get to because it takes the buy-in of the consumer," he said. "Education is going to be important. We're going to have to continue to push to make sure that people understand to bring their bags back to the store."

Industry officials see their plan as a significant commitment. ARPBA Chairman Gary Alstott, who is also an executive at bag maker Novolex, said the industry has invested heavily in building an infrastructure to recycle plastic bags.

"Our members now recycle hundreds of millions of pounds of bags and plastic films each year, and each of us are undertaking many other efforts to promote sustainable bag use," he said in a statement.