The plastics recycling industry is addressing the recent reports that only five to six percent of plastic waste that is put in recycling bins by consumers, is actually recycled. Why and what needs to change?
“We need to dramatically reduce plastic production – starting with numbers 3 through 7 plastics. Currently, five percent of the plastic in the U.S. is recycled and nine percent in the rest of the world,” said Jared Opsal, executive director of Missouri Coalition for the Environment.
As Opsal explained, the Resin Identification Codes (RICs) display the types of plastic from 1 to 7. Number 1 and 2 plastics are the most recyclable, but those are only recycled around 30 percent of the time. Also, numbers 6 and 7 are nearly impossible to recycle.
“Large oil companies were aware that plastic recycling was not a realistic solution to plastic pollution as early as 1974, but they began promoting recycling as a way to address plastic pollution anyway,” Opsal said. “It is safe to assume this was to protect what is now an approximately $400 billion industry.”
According to Tony Perrotta, a sustainability and regenerative economy expert at PA Consulting, the challenge posed by recycling and plastics specifically is extremely complex. A number of solutions are needed.
“It will take a portfolio approach to create meaningful impact,” Perrotta said. “First, lean into better mechanical recycling practices, leveraged by vision technology, AI and robotics. Waste Management is leaning into AI and Republic Services is leveraging robotics. GreyParrot is another company using AI-based analytics. AMP Robotics are providing the robots.”
Second, Perrotta said advanced recycling methods are coming onto the scene in a big way. Companies like Eastman Kodak and PureCycle in the U.S. are examples.
“While mechanical recycling uses physical processes such as grinding, washing, separating, and compounding in which polymers remain intact, advanced recycling typically alters the chemical structure of plastics, by methods such as dissolving with chemicals or using heat to break them down into original components,” Perrotta said.
What Perrotta is most excited about is a move into novel and alternative materials altogether. These include things like seaweed, alginates, microorganisms and plant-based fibers.
“We see immense promise in plant-based fibers. One in particular is a technology called PulPac. It’s a dry, molded fiber process that we are using to replace single use plastic bottles, medication packs and other packaging,” Perrotta said.
“There’s a growing sentiment that the landfills of today have an opportunity to be the urban goldmines of tomorrow. There’s a battle raging for material of all types – recycled plastic content, rare earth minerals, aluminum, glass, etc.,” Perrotta said. “This has led to a growing level of investment in technologies that seek to reduce reliance on materials, capture materials earlier in their lifecycle, and unlock value from discarded materials.”
Ambarish Mitra, co-founder at Greyparrot, a company that offers an AI waste analytics platform, said rapidly phasing out the use of these single-use plastics, such as plastic and polystyrene food and beverage containers, bottles, straws, cups, cutlery and disposable plastic bags, is an obtainable goal.
“Prevention of use is the most effective action towards sustainable waste management,” Mitra said. “However, transitioning producers away from single-use plastics also presents significant challenges. The good news is that Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) bills are gaining traction. Already passed in Maine, Colorado, Oregon, and California, these bills aim to hold manufacturers financially accountable for the entire lifecycle of their products, including collection, recycling, and disposal. The hope is that they will incentivize producers to adopt more sustainable practices and materials.”
Biggest Impediments
The largest impediment to addressing the plastics recycling issue is that only a few types of plastic are recyclable. Those few are still extremely difficult and expensive to recycle.
“Barring some revolutionary technological breakthrough, there will never be a viable solution to plastic pollution,” Opsal commented. “Plastics recycling is a niche field fraught with a high recycling cost and there is a large amount of plastic to recycle. There is little they can do to meaningfully address plastic pollution.”
Mitra added that one surprising reason why plastic recycling efficacy is so low actually has nothing to do with whether plastic is recyclable. Instead, it’s because today’s recycling sorting technology hasn’t caught up with the types of plastics that producers use.
“For instance, the prevalent black plastic that is often used for food is almost always unsortable within legacy recycling facilities as they cannot identify the object,” Mitra said. “Many of these facilities sort plastics by bouncing a beam of light off them. Since black plastic absorbs light, it is unsorted and never makes it into a recycling stream – instead, is landfilled.”
Fortunately, new AI technologies that are being delivered into next-generation material recovery facilities (MRFs) are beginning to address the problem by capturing real-time images from cameras installed over conveyor belts.
“This approach is now being used to finally recycle black plastics and many other newer packaging,” Mitra said.
Outside of single-use plastics, Mitra said another challenge we are facing with plastics is polymers that break down into microplastics. Polymers come in multiple forms, but four are commonly most used. These include HDPE, which is used for yogurt tubs, shampoo bottles, and milk jugs. Low-density polyethylene (LDPE), which is used in shopping bags or bread bags, polyethylene terephthalate (PET), which is used in beverage bottles or microwavable food trays, and polypropylene, which is used in most food containers.
According to Mitra, with that in mind, next-generation recycling processes are needed to produce longer-lasting recyclables and ensure the recyclability of all polymers. Pyrolysis is one approach to breaking down polymers into their base chemicals, leaving no functional difference between virgin and recycled material.
“It also allows the recycling of a broader range of polymers, including those traditionally considered non-recyclable due to contamination or complex compositions,” Mitra said.
Caroline DeLoach, director of sustainability, Atlantic Packaging, said her biggest concern coming out of these reports is that consumers don’t have enough context for what the “five to six-percent” statistic actually means, and this causes distrust in the recycling system that is misplaced.
“This statistic, which came from a Greenpeace report in 2022, received a great deal of press but also came under sharp criticism because of its misleading implications,” DeLoach said. “Folks quote it to me all the time and say, ‘See? This is why I don’t recycle, there’s no point. I put stuff in the recycling bin and it doesn’t get recycled.’ But that’s not what these stats are telling us: the disappointing numbers come from a few challenges.”
As previously mentioned, many kinds of plastic simply are not designed for recyclability. Also, many people simply don’t have access to recycling because their municipality or apartment building doesn’t offer it, often because of the expense.
“Lastly, yes, our collection, recycling systems, and sortation facilities are imperfect, but perhaps more importantly, people are still really confused about how to recycle properly,” DeLoach said.” The point is: these statistics are not saying that the recyclable plastics that make their way to MRFs are not recycled. MRFs often have quite good yields; it’s that they don’t have access to all of the usable material, and they receive a lot of unusable material.”
DeLoach pointed out that the recycling industry is often disadvantaged by the fact that few people actually see what goes on once something goes into their blue bin.
“People want to understand what happens to their recyclables, and we need to show them so that they can develop an appropriate level of trust in the process,” DeLoach said. “Municipalities and advocacy groups must work with MRFs to show how sortation actually works, mostly to acknowledge the current limitations of the system so that consumers might understand what materials they can actually recycle.”
From DeLoach’s vantage point, manufacturers and brands are already working tirelessly to integrate as much post-consumer recycled (PCR) content into their packaging as they can. They typically are navigating external challenges such as the volatile price of PCR compared to virgin resin and high amounts of contamination and performance challenges, not to mention limitations like ensuring that PCR can be food-grade for food-contact packaging.
“From everything I can tell, there is no shortage of desire to acquire and use PCR in packaging – there are just too many obstacles in the way to continue scaling quickly,” DeLoach said.