Container and Packaging Recycling Update - Volume XV No. 1 - Spring 2007

Increase in container waste
overshadows modest gains in recycling

by Jenny Gitlitz

Aluminum cans and PET plastic beverage bottles are still being wasted in record numbers, while recycling rates for the two packages have remained at a plateau for several years.

According to data derived from the Aluminum Association and the U.S. Bureau of the Census, 98.9 billion cans were sold in the United States in 2005, down from the 100.5 billion sold in 2004. This modest decline in sales may be partly to blame for the 800 million fewer domestic cans recycled in 2005 (44.3 billion) than in 2004 (45.2 billion). In percentage terms, the recycling rate for cans remained virtually unchanged: 45.1% in 2004 versus 45.0% in 2005. This is 20 percentage points below the high of 65% recycling achieved in 1992.

Despite recent efforts by the aluminum and beverage industries to promote curbside recycling, event recycling, and recycling for charitable programs, there is no evidence that aluminum can recycling is on the road to recovery.

CRI estimates that in 2005, 798,000 tons of cans—an amount equivalent to the annual output of 2-3 large primary aluminum smelters—were wasted in the United States. Replacing this many wasted cans with new cans made from 100% virgin aluminum requires the energy equivalent of 28.6 million barrels of crude oil—an amount that could meet all the residential energy needs of 1.7 million American homes.

Slight increases in the percentage of PET plastic recycled have been overshadowed by rapid increases in the amount of plastic wasted. Sales of PET bottle resin rose from 4,637 million lbs in 2004 to 5,075 million lbs in 2005: an increase of 438 million lbs. Recycling increased by only 167 million lbs during that period: from 1,003 million lbs recycled in 2004 to 1,170 million lbs in 2005.

In percentage terms, the PET recycling rate increased less than 2 percentage points, from 21.6% in 2004 to 23.1% in 2005. At the same time, the amount of resin not recycled grew by 271 million lbs: from 3,634 million lbs wasted in 2004 to 3,905 million lbs wasted in 2005. In other words, Americans landfilled, littered or incinerated almost 2 million tons of PET plastic bottles in 2005.

The overall PET recycling rate of 23.1%, however, masks important differences in the recycling rates for PET soft drink bottles and other (“custom”) PET bottles, including non-carbonated beverages such as water and juice, and non-beverage bottles such as ketchup or shampoo. From 1990 until 2005, the American Plastics Council (now the American Chemistry Council) reported sales and recycling for soft drink bottles and custom PET bottles separately. Last year was the first year that the industry did not report these two recycling rates separately. In 2004, the recycling rate for carbonated soft drink bottles was 33.6%, more than twice the rate for custom bottles (14.5%).

Figure 5

Figure 5 shows how PET soda bottle recycling has far exceeded recycling for “Custom PET” bottles (all beverage and non-beverage PET plastic bottles that are not soda bottles.) This disparity can be attributed to the fact that in 2004, 10 states had refundable deposits on soft drink bottles (Hawaii’s deposit law was implemented in 2005), while only three states had deposits on non-carbonated beverage containers.

Changes in the rate of custom PET recycling can be directly observed through policy changes. The inclusion of non-carbonated beverages in California’s deposit system in 2000, and the increase in the deposit value in 2002, are in part responsible for modest increases in the national PET bottle recycling rate.

Reporting the soft drink bottle and custom bottle recycling rate as one rate helps hide the dismal recycling rate for water bottles and other PET bottles.

Unfortunately, adequate data do not exist for glass bottle recycling. The Glass Packaging Institute stopped reporting recycling data in 1998, and the most recent U.S. EPA estimate for glass recycling was approximately 28% in 2003.

Taken as a whole, CRI estimates that the overall beverage container recycling rate in the United States has fallen from a high of 48% in 1997 to only 33% in 2005. This decline is in marked dis-tinction to recycling trends in other industries. For example, the American Forest and Paper Association reports that the recycling rate for paper and paperboard has increased steadily—from 38.7% in 1993 to 51.5% in 2005. The paper industry has set a goal of 55% recycling.

It is worth noting that the national average recycling rates are themselves pulled up by the high container recycling rates (ranging from 65% to 95%) in the 11 states that require refundable deposits on beverage containers.

CRI estimates that the national aluminum can recycling rate would be around 35% were it not for the access to deposit systems that is enjoyed by almost a third of the American public. The PET recycling rate would be at or below the last reported custom PET recycling rate, or 10-15%.

Despite a thirty-year record of recycling success in bottle bill states, and despite the depressed state of the can and bottle recycling rates at the national level for over a decade, the beverage and grocery industries continue to oppose new deposit laws, and to oppose updating existing deposit laws in 8 states to include non-carbonated beverages--spending large sums to stymie proposals from coast to coast.

As this political stalemate drags on, hundreds of billions of energy-intensive aluminum cans and plastic bottles continue to be wasted.

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