Economics, PCR goals may not mesh

As the heavy flow of inexpensive virgin resin continues flooding the United States, an important question about packaging looms over some consumer brands: Will 2025 recycled-content goals be met?

For some, cost and sustainability might not mix. Meanwhile, recyclers are looking for ways to hold steady in a tough market.

During the Spotlight on Plastics session at the mid-April Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI) convention in Las Vegas, Nina Bellucci Butler, CEO of Sonoma, California-based Stina Inc., said brands cannot make commitments and then let shareholders down by not being fiducially responsible.

“We can’t not recycle. Instead of demonizing recyclers, we need to really be focused on driving the behavior we want. With economics, if you have an objective but don’t have an instrument for that objective, we’re never going to get there.” – Nina Bellucci Butler, CEO, Stina Inc.

“They have to go with where the best price is, so I think that’s when sustainability goes by the wayside,” she said. “If we don’t, as a society, say we want to actually address the plastic pollution problem and we need to address climate change, we’re going to continue to be stuck with this [disconnect].

“We can’t not recycle. Instead of demonizing recyclers, we need to really be focused on driving the behavior we want. With economics, if you have an objective but don’t have an instrument for that objective, we’re never going to get there.”

Cherish Changala, vice president of sustainability and public affairs for Arkansas-based film recycling company Revolution, added, “If it’s easier and makes sense for a company to buy virgin to meet certain dollar figures, and that’s what their shareholders are requiring, it’s really hard to get there another way. … It’s not going to get easier. Virgin supply is going up.”

The panel, which also featured Scott Saunders, general manager of Alabama-based high-density polyethylene and polypropylene recycler KW Plastics, and Kate Eagles, program director at the Washington-based Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR), agreed that extended producer responsibility programs and recycled-content minimum requirements for packaging are tools that could lead to increased use of postconsumer recycled (PCR) content. They also surmised more collection is needed nationwide.

The U.S. became a net importer of recycled plastics for the first time in 2023. Additionally, data released in March by the APR, ISRI (now the Recycled Materials Association, or ReMA) and the U.S. Plastics Pact showed slightly more than 5 billion pounds of postconsumer plastics were recovered for recycling in the U.S. in 2022, down 71.2 million pounds from 2021.

Saunders said the challenge for recyclers remains supplying PCR amid the surge of virgin material in the marketplace. Also, he said recyclers can develop new processes for the material, but it won’t matter unless new projects or programs come along to expand curbside recycling.

“Unless that isn’t expanded, the rate of recycling cannot grow,” he said.