Study Claims Recycling Plastics Reduces Energy Use, Greenhouse Gas Emissions

The American Chemistry Council has released a study that the association says demonstrates that recycling plastics, specifically PET and HDPE, results in significant savings in energy and greenhouse gas emissions. The study used life cycle inventory (LCI) methodology to quantify the energy requirements, solid wastes, and atmospheric and waterborne emissions for the processes required to collect postconsumer PET and HDPE packaging, sort and separate the material, and reprocess it into clean recycled resin.

Based on the LCI study results and data from U.S. EPA, the generation of cleaned recycled resin required 71 trillion Btu less than the amount of energy that would be required to produce the equivalent tonnage of virgin PET and HDPE resin.

The new study, Final Report—Life Cycle Inventory of 100% Postconsumer HDPE and PET Recycled Resin from Postconsumer Containers and Packaging, conducted by Franklin Associates Ltd., was jointly sponsored by the American Chemistry Council (ACC), the Association of Postconsumer Plastic Recyclers (APR), the National Association for PET Container Resources (NAPCOR) and the PET Resin Association (PETRA).

The full report, Final Report—Life Cycle Inventory of 100% Postconsumer HDPE and PET Recycled Resin from Postconsumer Containers and Packaging, is available by clicking here.