US bag and film recycling surpasses 1 billion pounds

According to a new report, more than 1 billion pounds of post-consumer plastic bags and films were collected for recycling in the United States, in 2011. According to the National Postconsumer Plastic Bag & Film Recycling Report, that’s a 55 percent increase in 2005, and 4 percent increase in 2010. Film and sheet manufacturers are the second largest market that are accounting for 16 percent of the total.

“There’s two bits of good news in the sense that the processing rate… has gone up a modest amount, 24 million pounds. And there’s a shift… in terms of a greater percentage of the amount collected is going to North American processors rather than being shipped overseas. But there is still a lot of plastic film, plastic shrink-wrap, that is very recyclable that gets collected at the back of stores that is not being recycled,” Murray said.

The largest category of recycled film is what Moore Recycling calls “commercial clear” — clear, clean polyethylene film including stretch wrap and poly bags. The material accounts for 47 percent of the film that is recycled, a figure that is falling. Exactly how much it has dropped is difficult to pinpoint, though, in part because since this year’s survey includes a new category, mixed color commercial film.

The report also records that changes in the shipping market strategy may have effected to the decline  commercial clear film, including warehouse consolidation and adjustments in how retailers prepare pallets for shipment.

“there needs to be more focus to recover commercial clear and other post-industrial, pre-consumer films” Murray said. He added that “We need to get that behind-the-store shrink-wrap back into the recycling infrastructure, And really, this ‘post-industrial, pre-consumer’ plastic represents a success story that 10 years ago those were all corrugated boxes, which are much worse than shrink wrap for the environment,”.

According to the information that were collected from 19 U.S and three Canadian end user post-consumer film and 37 companies that export consumer film, the report concludes that:

• 151 million pounds of post-consumer bags and sacks were recovered in 2011, a 19 percent increase from 2010. But we still do not have enough data to analyze properly.
• Increasing other film categories, including curbside film collection, is another challenging that    cause to raise the value of end product.

ACC noted that “there are currently more than 15,000 U.S. locations where consumers can bring their used polyethylene bags and wraps to be recycled, primarily at large grocery and retail chains”.

“In-store collection is absolutely critical for recycling plastic bags, wraps and other flexible film packaging,” said Steve Russell, ACC’s vice president of plastics, in a news release.

“The infrastructure is there. The plastic film industry is now working to help grocers and retailers maximize the collection of this valuable material by sharing tools and best practices and through consistent customer education,” he said

 plastic plastic news, 2013, https://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20130225/NEWS/130229956/us-bag-and-film-recycling-surpasses-1-billion-pounds

Categorised in: EPA