CRI report: A national DRS program would increase the UBC recycling rate to 85 percent

The Container Recycling Institute (CRI), a nonprofit organization based in Culver City, California, has released a report, “Improving Efficiency and Sustainability in Aluminum Beverage Can Recycling,” that shows implementing a national beverage container deposit return system (DRS, or bottle bill) would result recycling nearly 815,000 more tons of aluminum used beverage cans (UBCs) annually, which would increase the national UBC recycling rate to 85 percent. Using the 2021 UBC recycling rate as an example, that would be a percentage point increase of 48.  

The Can Manufacturers Institute, the Aluminum Association and the Coalition for High Performance Recycling also have been advocating for DRS and/or extended producer responsibility programs as ways to increase the UBC recycling rate. 

The CRI report was made possible with support from the Arconic Foundation and addresses the issues involved in manufacturing aluminum beverage cans and how they differ from other aluminum products. CRI prepared the report with RTI International of North Carolina by reviewing previous industry studies and conducting its own research, analyses and data compilation. 

UBCs have a high potential for direct recyclability with limited losses, the CRI says. However, current aluminum UBC recycling practices present multiple points where UBCs can be lost. According to the report, aluminum material losses at curbside recycling, material recovery facilities (MRFs) and secondary melters are financially and environmentally significant enough to warrant discussion on new and expanded methods of aluminum beverage can recycling, sorting, processing and even design.

Aluminum beverage can production is at an all-time high nationally, with nearly 110 billion units generated in 2022, and the U.S. consumes more than one-quarter of all aluminum cans globally. However, the national UBC recycling rate has been trending downward over the last decade, and the 2021 rate of 37.2 percent that CRI has calculated is substantially lower than that in many other industrialized countries. (A 2023 report funded by Ball Corp. and produced by Eunomia Research & Consulting calculates the 2021 U.S. UBC recycling rate at 45.2 percent. Ball also was calling for an increase in the UBC recycling rate by implementing DRS.)   

Missed opportunities 

According to the CRI report, a number of factors contribute to UBC losses across the value chain: 

• Lack of collection. Fifty-five percent of UBCs in the U.S. are put in curbside bins or redeemed through a DRS (an option available only in 10 states). The remaining 45 percent are either thrown out or littered. If the country had only curbside recycling and no DRS programs, the theoretical maximum recycling rate would be 45 percent given losses at MRFs and melters, as well as the fact that about 24 percent of beverages in aluminum cans are consumed away from home, the CRI report states. 
• Processing and baling at MRFs. A variety of state studies indicate that between 25 percent and 33 percent of aluminum beverage cans are missorted at MRFs, with one study putting the number at 53 percent. While CRI says it is not aware of a national study on aluminum losses at MRFs, using a national 33 percent loss rate for single-stream MRFs and a reported 5 percent loss rate for dual-stream MRFs equates to more than 146,000 tons of UBCs being missorted in 2021. Additional comprehensive studies are needed to analyze the sorting and recovery accuracy of MRFs. 
• Processing and baling at secondary melters. Secondary aluminum melters receive baled cans from DRS programs, MRFs, drop-off sites and scrap yards. Eleven percent of the total weight of incoming UBC bales from MRFs consists of contaminants that must be removed during processing. Contaminants include those that are unavoidable, such as inherent parts of the can and baling wire, and those that are avoidable, such as plastics, dirt and debris, fiber and other materials. 

Losses and other deficiencies associated with UBC recycling practices come with economic and environmental consequences. For instance, the economic value of the more than 1 million tons of wasted UBCs in 2021 was approximately $1.6 billion. If these UBCs were recycled, U.S. energy consumption would be reduced by more than 160,000,000 million BTUs (based on the U.S. EPA WARM), which equates to the average annual energy consumption of approximately 2.1 million households, and potential greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions would total 9.8 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (also using the EPA’s WARM). This equates to the annual amount of GHG emissions from approximately 2.1 million passenger vehicles. 

“It is imperative that the domestic aluminum can industry improve its recycled content status because the global aluminum can industry simply cannot meet its sustainability goals without such improvement,” CRI President Susan Collins says. “Also, additional material throughput is needed to support the multibillion-dollar investments in two new secondary melters being built in the U.S., which will bring the total number of these facilities nationally to nine. Any further declines in the U.S. aluminum UBC recycling rate, or any legislative repeals of state DRS programs, would threaten UBC supply levels for the melters, putting a financial strain on their businesses.” 

Collins says the data demonstrate that DRS programs can have the most impact in increasing UBC recycling rates, adding, “We believe that a potential 85 percent national recovery rate is achievable with a high-performing, transparent recycling system.” 

Strategies to increase UBC redemption rates

According to published data, 73 percent of U.S. households have access to either curbside recycling or drop-off programs. Therefore, Collins says, expanding all types of recycling opportunities, including curbside, DRS and away-from-home recycling, and increased collaboration among the programs can ensure the highest aluminum UBC recovery rates. 

However, Collins adds, previous research and the analyses completed for this report illustrate that DRS programs provide the most effective means to achieve meaningful recycling rate improvements. 

Using industry data, CRI calculated the U.S. recycling rate for UBC through DRS programs at 74 percent, while the rate for UBCs outside of these programs was 26 percent using 2021 data. The 10 states with DRS programs account for almost half the total tons of UBCs recycled in the U.S., or 300,716 of the 633,500 tons using 2021 data. 

CRI says DRS programs recycle more UBCs because they are handled and sorted differently than those in curbside systems. Cans are not mixed with other materials in DRS systems, resulting in clean, high-quality UBCs more likely to be made into new containers. 

CRI has identified four strategies that it says will improve the U.S. UBC recycling rate: 

1. Improve existing state DRS programs that are deficient. Modernizing the 10 DRS programs in place today to include more beverage types and increase the deposit incentive from 5 cents to 10 cents is the simplest way to increase the national aluminum UBC recycling rate, CRI says. States with DRS programs already have redemption infrastructure in place, though expanding the availability of convenient beverage container redemption sites is important in states that have seen large numbers of center closures.  
   
   Implementing this strategy would result in the recycling of 54,007 more tons of aluminum beverage cans per year (in addition to the 633,500 tons currently recycled), which would increase the national UBC recycling rate by 3.2 percentage points, CRI says.
   
2. Implement deposit laws in all states that have introduced DRS legislation since 2021. Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois, North Carolina, New Jersey, Washington, Maryland, New Hampshire and Rhode Island all have introduced DRS but have not passed the legislation. Implementing DRS programs would recycle 339,145 more tons of UBCs annually, increasing the national UBC recycling rate by 20 percentage points.
   
   
   This amount of additional recycling would eliminate up to 3.1 million tons of GHG emissions annually, equivalent to taking nearly 675,000 cars off the road, CRI says. 
   
   It also would eliminate up to 51.7 trillion BTUs of energy use, which is enough to meet the total residential energy needs of more than 670,000 American homes, or more than the total number of occupied housing units in the cities of Tampa, Florida, and Denver combined.
   
   
3. Implement DRS laws in the 10 nondeposit states with the highest populations. If DRS laws were implemented in Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, New Jersey, Virginia and Washington, 412,475 more tons of UBCs would be recycled per year, which would increase the national UBC recycling rate by 24 percentage points.
   
   This amount of additional recycling would eliminate up to 3.8 million metric tons of GHG emissions annually, equivalent to taking approximately 820,000 cars off the road, CRI says.
   
   It also would eliminate up to 63 trillion BTUs of energy use, which is enough to meet the total residential energy needs of nearly 815,000 American homes, or more than the total number of occupied housing units in the cities of Seattle and Tucson, Arizona, combined.
   
   
4. Implement a national beverage container deposit return system. Implementing this strategy would result in recycling 814,545 more tons of UBCs per year, which would increase the national UBC recycling rate by 48 percentage points to 85 percent.
   

Additional benefits

A nationwide DRS would offer additional benefits, such as reducing landfill waste and litter.

Nationwide in 2021, an estimated 1 million-plus tons of UBCs ended up in landfills and incinerators or were littered instead of being diverted to recycling. This amount of wasted aluminum on its own could be used to rebuild the entire 2021 U.S. fleet of commercial aircraft 17.3 times over, totaling more than 109,000 midsize and large planes, CRI says. 

It also would reduce energy consumption. In 2021, 67 billion aluminum cans were wasted nationwide. Replacing these with new cans made from virgin materials consumed the energy equivalent of 124 trillion BTUs, which is enough to meet the total residential energy needs of 1.6 million American homes, or more than the total number of occupied housing units in the city of Chicago. 

GHGs would be reduced as well. Aluminum beverage can waste accounted for 55 percent of the total GHG impacts of beverage container waste in 2021. With an 85 percent national recycling rate performance target, additional recycling of these cans would eliminate approximately 7.5 million tons of GHG emissions per year, equivalent to taking 1.6 million cars off the road. 

The 'gold standard'

Collins says implementing a full DRS program in the U.S. would be challenging if not taken in stages as no country this large has implemented a new DRS program all at once.  

“However, based on our findings, we can conclusively report that DRS programs are the ‘gold standard’ for beverage container recycling,” she says. “New and improved programs are key to improvements that benefit industry, consumers and the environment.”