Note: This article continues the series of updates in Plastics Engineering from Plastics Make it Possible^®, an initiative sponsored by America’s Plastics Makers™ through the ACC.

Recycling in the USA is growing. Our nation’s overall recycling rate reached 34.5% in 2012, more than double the 1990 rate, as measured by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). 

That’s really good news. Many materials, including plastics, have value even after we use them, so burying them in landfills is a waste of resources. Plus, recycling programs for plastics and other materials can have additional positive influences on the environment, according to EPA’s report on recycling in 2012:

• Recycling combined with composting (EPA often lumps these together) saved “the same amount of energy consumed by almost 10 million U.S. households in a year.” 
• Recycling and composting reduced greenhouse gas emissions that are the equivalent of removing more than 33 million passenger vehicles from the road in a year.
• Recycling and composting industries can create significantly more and better jobs than hauling and burying garbage.

Recycling of plastic bottles, containers, and bags has grown each year since tracking began. For example, the pounds of used plastic bottles collected for recycling have grown each year since 1990, and the recycling rate reached nearly 31% in 2012. According to reports commissioned for the Plastics Division of the American Chemistry Council (ACC), today more than 90% of Americans have access to plastics recycling, and there are more than 18,000 collection locations for plastic bags and wraps (more on that below).

But recycling advocates continually ask: Can we do better? Many other countries have significantly higher recycling rates. (Through recycling and energy recovery, Germany landfills only 1% of its waste!) 

Innovations in recycling are showing promise. For instance, many communities recently have seen huge advances in recycling rates after moving to single-stream recycling, in which all recyclables go in one bin. These rising recycling rates lift the profiles of all materials, including plastics.

In addition, government, businesses, and the recycling community now are working together to help consumers better understand whatand where to recycle. For example, the Sustainable Packaging Coalition has created a new “How 2 Recycle” label for packaging that provides clear, simple, and nationally harmonized recycling directions. With support from companies including Costco, General Mills, Microsoft, and Estee Lauder, the new label has the potential to dramatically increase recycling rates.

Another widespread collection program for used plastic film (bread bags, newspaper bags, grocery bags, dry-cleaning wraps, and other flexible product wraps) has been rolled out at thousands of major retailers across the country, including grocery stores, Target, Walmart, Lowe’s, and others. The plastic film is recycled into composite lumber, containers, pallets, and new film and bag applications (see also the ACC article on pp. 30-32 of January’s Plastics Engineering).

Getting the Message Out

While these and other efforts will help significantly increase plastics (and other) recycling, perhaps what’s really needed to jolt recycling rates is a cultural shift in attitudes towards waste and recycling. Today only 55% of Americans say that they are “very” or “extremely” knowledgeable about how to properly recycle, according to research by the Ad Council. And only 44% of Americans identify themselves as “avid” recyclers. That must change for the USA to reach substantially higher recycling rates.

Numerous organizations and companies are hoping that a recently launched campaign to boost recycling can help.

Many (older) people remember the iconic advertisement that first aired on Earth Day in 1971 featuring Iron Eyes Cody as a Native American who shed that famous tear upon surveying the littered landscape before him. The ad demonstrated how litter and other forms of pollution were hurting the environment and emphasized that every individual had a personal responsibility to help protect the environment. That campaign, sponsored by the Ad Council and Keep America Beautiful (KAB), helped make it culturally unacceptable to litter. The ad became one of the most memorable and successful campaigns in advertising history and was named one of the top 100 advertising campaigns of the 20th century by Ad Age. 

A campaign launched in 2013, sponsored again by the Ad Council and KAB and supported with seed money from the Plastics Division of the ACC, similarly provides free public service announcement (PSA) advertising for television, radio, digital, print, and outdoor advertising to spread the word about the importance of recycling. The campaign states it’s “designed to raise awareness about the benefits of recycling with the goal to make recycling a daily social norm.” The advertising encourages people to “give your garbage another life. Recycle.” It’s a simple message: It’s not waste—it has value, so recycle.

The Ad Council distributed the PSAs to more than 33,000 media outlets nationwide. Following the Ad Council’s model, the ads will run in space and time entirely donated by the media. In just over a year, the campaign has received more than $64 million in donated media.

Meanwhile, the campaign’s website (www.iwanttoberecycled.org) encourages recycling and highlights its benefits: conserving natural resources, reducing the need for landfills, preventing pollution, saving energy, and creating jobs. Website visitors can “discover how your garbage gets a new life” and learn more about recycling, such as the fact that “some materials can travel through the recycling and manufacturing process to be back on the store shelf in as little as 30 days.” Recycling advocates also are encouraged to share recycling videos and facts on social media and to participate in events in recognition of America Recycles Day on November 15, as well as various recycling challenges.

In addition to the Plastics Division of the ACC, numerous companies and organizations support the campaign, including the Alcoa Foundation, the Anheuser-Busch Foundation, the City of Austin, the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, Nestlé Waters North America, Niagara Bottling, the State of Connecticut, Unilever, and Waste Management. 

As KAB noted when announcing the campaign, “Based on survey feedback, we know people want to recycle. This campaign is designed to tap into that desire as well as provide helpful tools to make recycling easier.”

Will it work? Can this campaign help make it culturally unacceptable to toss recyclable plastics—or any recyclable—in the trash?

That’s up to all of us.

For more information on the campaign, visit www.iwanttoberecycled.org.