No one wants tons of waste polluting the environment. Yet over the past few years, some voices in the environmental movement have suggested that recycling, notably plastic recycling, is futile at best — or at worst a ruse that contributes to the ubiquity of plastic trash.
Plastic waste is an existential crisis, and no credible voice can argue otherwise. For that reason, efforts to reduce and reuse plastics must be prioritized. But let’s pause for a reality check: According to the United Nations Environment Programme, humanity has already produced more than 9 billion tons of plastic, with 7 billion tons discarded into landfills.
Recycling in the U.S. is a complex, interdependent, multi-material system that comprises 9,000 local governments, countless consumer goods companies and a multitude of private-sector collectors and processors of recyclables. Plastic waste may capture the headlines, but it isn’t the only weak link. The entire system requires urgent investment, not vilification, if we are to have any hope of reducing waste and keeping valuable materials out of landfills.
Based on a recent study of seven global jurisdictions with EPR programs, we found that enacting EPR in the U.S. could increase recycling rates by as much as 48 percentage points. For most U.S. states, recycling rates under EPR could be as high as 75%. 3. Package recyclability standards: There is no industry alignment around a single, transparent source of truth on packaging compatibility with the recycling system. This needs to change.