PET Recycling

Fortunately, PET can be recycled and put to a wide variety of uses after it is reclaimed. For example, post-consumer recycled PET is often spun into fibers used to make clothing and carpeting. Other products made from recycled PET include: belts, boat hulls, car parts, egg cartons, furniture, insulations, landfill liners, overhead transparencies, paint brush bristles, pillows, recycling bins, sales, scouring pads, strapping, tennis ball cans, tennis ball felt, twine, and welcome mats.

Over 5 billion lbs of PET was manufactured in the U.S. in 2005 alone. Of that 5 billion lbs, only 1 billion was recycled. In other words, at least 4 billion pounds of PET plastic, that could have been recycled, found its way to landfills. For comparison purposes, that would equate to 88 billion 20oz plastic bottles. Although the overall weight in comparison to other waste in landfills is small, the volume of space in those landfills taken up by PET is enormous in proportion. Plus, PET really never degrades. Future archeologists could classify our modern civilization as the “Age of Plastics”. Once buried, PET is there forever.

Currently, brokers of collected recyclables in the U.S. purchase PET from Material Recovery Facilities (MRFs), many of which are located at landfills. Much of the PET is shipped to Asia, where there is little regulation over the discharge of wastes associated with cleaning dirty PET. Because of the huge demand for PET by Asian manufacturers, once the PET is sent to Asia, little, if any, of the recycled material returns to the U.S.

Demand for PET plastic continues to increase: an estimated demand of 8 billion lbs of PET is expected for 2008. Additionally, increased prices for oil and natural gas, which are used to provide energy and feedstock raw material for the manufacture of plastics, have led to significant price increases for virgin plastic resins, along with further consumption of the world’s oil resources…a vicious cycle.

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