Page 40 - Plastics News February 2025
P. 40
BUSINESS NEWS
US EPA shares new recycling
rate estimates
♦ HDPE bottles: 22.7%.
♦ Aluminum: 36.9%.
♦ Steel: 31.2%.
♦ Cardboard: 53.5%.
♦ Paper: 29.6%.
♦ Glass: 41.4%.
♦ Total: 38.9%.
he U.S. EPA’s recent recycling infrastruc- Those generation and recycling volumes were
ture report was largely focused on the in- estimated using the 50 States of Recycling re-
Tvestments needed to improve the system port, prepared by Eunomia for the Ball Cor-
but also included new recycling rate estimates poration, as well as the U.S. Census Bureau’s
for specific materials, some of the first data American Community Survey and state waste
updates the agency has released since its last management reports.
Facts and Figures report several years ago.
The report noted that the 50 States of Recycling
The Assessment of the U.S. Recycling System: report from 2021 was applied to state-level pop-
Financial Estimates to Modernize Material Re- ulation data from the 2019 American Community
covery Infrastructure came out of a 2021 direc- Survey. However, data for paper generation and
tive from Congress for the EPA to collect data recycling were unavailable for most states, so
on residential recycling and estimate the finan- the EPA estimated missing values using the dif-
cial investments needed to modernize the U.S. ference between average per-capita generation
recycling system. and recycling for states that reported data for
paper recycling.
It included 2019 generation and recycling ton-
nages for PET bottles, PET rigids, HDPE bottles, “It is important to note that the state paper gen-
aluminum, steel, cardboard, paper and glass – eration data are self-reported, not independent-
and the rates, in many cases, differ sharply from ly verified, collected at irregular intervals, and
other estimates. contain varying levels of detail about community
recycling programs,” the report’s authors add-
The report estimated recycling rates of:
ed.
♦ PET bottles: 23.2%.
Terry Webber, American Forest and Paper As-
♦ PET rigids: 5.9%. sociation vice president of industry affairs, said
40 PLASTICS NEWS February 2025
