National Harbor, Md. — Expect 2025 to be a year of uncertainty for recycled resin pricing. Recyclers, buyers and experts agree: until people see how tariffs work out, nothing else matters.
"These markets are very uncertain, and they have been since COVID," said Emily Friedman, recycled plastics senior editor at ICIS, at the Plastics Recycling Conference in National Harbor. "But even more so now with the trade implications going on, which seem to change by the hour."
Alongside the usual market forces like seasonal demand, bottle supply and construction starts, President Donald Trump's tariffs are causing a lot of uncertainty.
Some sources are seeing a boost in sales currently and are unsure if it is due to an increase in demand or out of uncertainty of the market, creating a false increase of demand.
"If you look in January, recycled PET imports hit record highs coming into the U.S from Southeast Asia," said a resin manufacture in the South. "That's always a change on the pricing side and some of that is because of the expectation of tariffs. People are trying to get in as much as they can at a low price before tariffs increase it by what can be 40-50 percent."
The majority of sources contacted by Plastics News are unsure of where the market can go compared with prior years. While the recycled resin market has never been able to be predicted perfectly, the past years usually follow certain trends.
Most sources expect recycled material pricing to rise in 2025, and that is mostly the result of the expected tariffs.
Recycled PET has already begun to drop during the start of 2025 after an unexpected increase in the fourth quarter of 2024 due to hurricane-related increases in demand. Sources are predicting an increase to happen as soon as the seasonal demand hits.
With recycled PET (rPET), imported material has been a big part of meeting demand and supporting supply chains. Friedman said imported material sometimes is cleaner and easier to process thanks to differences in how countries collect and reprocess resin.
"Beverage bottles are pretty ubiquitous, so we've been able to import both rPET feedstock in the form of flake, maybe even bales, as well as finished pellet rPET resin, in order to meet that demand and keep pricing a little bit more stable." Friedman saiod.
Recycled polypropylene prices are expected to increase later this year as sources feel that the market has just fully recovered from a lack of demand in 2023 that caused prices to severely decrease. In 2024, the recycled PP prices increased slightly as demand began to pick up, and sources expect that to continue into 2025.
Demand has been staying consistent, so sellers are seeing their inventory depleted to start off the year.
"There's a lot of new requirements coming up for PCR [post-consumer] content in vehicles and polypropylene is a great one for that," said a resin manufacture in the South. "I can see that continuing to grow and driving demand higher."
The market for recycled high density polyethylene has been rising in the past couple months, including a price spike in the beginning of 2025. Sources do not expect prices to go down.
Drastic price changes are something the recycled HDPE market is used to — buyers saw a spike in demand in 2022 and surplus of material in 2023 and now high prices in 2025.
In contrast to a couple years ago, there is not enough supply for demand right now.
"I don't know where it's going to end up, but I don't think tariffs have a play in it," said a recycler from the Southeast. "It's more of a supply and demand thing, it's a very competitive environment."
The pricing market for low density PE is expecting a couple pennies increase this year, starting out 2025 there has been a slight increase due to an increase in demand that started in mid 2024.
Sources are expecting prices for recycled linear LDPE to increase this year, compared to last year when prices were stable all year. Along with the other materials, sources are unsure exactly how much of an increase the tariffs will lead to.
"We feel the price will increase around 20 percent," said a materials company in California. "After the tariffs the imports will most likely slow down, meaning less recycled material will be available and we will have more serious competitive prices."
While a majority of sources are worried about tariffs, sources in recycled polycarbonate market feel they will not be as effected by tariffs as much as others.
"With that all being said, recycled polycarbonate will remain flat," said a material company in the East. "Everything we can even predict is a plateau."