The Container Recycling Institute (CRI) estimates that in 2005, an estimated 144 billion containers were wasted in the United States. Wasted means not recycled: sent to landfills or incinerators, or littered along our country’s roads and parks, fields and streams, and rivers and beaches. This includes approximately 54 billion aluminum cans, 52 billion plastic bottles and jugs, 30 billion glass bottles, and about 10 billion pouches, cartons, and drink boxes.
Almost two thirds, or 37 billion, of the 58 billion non-carbonated, non-alcoholic beverages purchased in 2005 were packaged in polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic bottles. A full 96% of the bottled water was sold in PET bottles, the vast majority being “single serve” sizes, including the 10-12 oz., 16 oz, 20-24 oz, and 1 liter sizes. These bottles are prone to being littered, and have a lower recycling rate than any of the most common packaging materials. In 2005, 23.1% of the 5 billion lbs of PET sold in the U.S. were recycled, or 1,170 million lbs – up from 775 million lbs recycled in 1995. But the amount recycled only tells part of the story. In 1995, the nationwide recycling rate for PET was almost 40%, and the amount of PET wasted (sent to landfills) was 1,175 million lbs. By 2005, wasting had nearly tripled to 3,900 million lbs (or almost 2 million tons).
It is also important to note that the 23.1% PET recycling rate in 2005 includes plastic carbonated soft drinks (CSD) bottles which are recycled at a higher rate than water and other non-carbonated beverages, due to the high recovery rates in eleven states where they have a 5 or 10-cent refund value. In 2005, the American Chemistry Council did not break out CSD as they have done for the past 16 years, but in 2004 the CSD recycling rate was 33.7% and the recycling rate for all other PET bottles was 14.5%. It is reasonable to assume that the rate for noncarbonated beverages was below 20% in 2005.
PET plastic is a petroleum product. Because it is presently recycled at such low rates, tens of billions of new plastic bottles must be manufactured each year from virgin materials – fossil fuels – to replace those bottles that were not recycled. The Container Recycling Institute estimates that approximately 18 million barrels of crude oil equivalent were consumed in 2005 to replace the 2 million tons of PET bottles that were wasted instead of recycled.
When PET plastic bottles are made from virgin materials rather than used bottle resin, more greenhouse gases are produced as well. An estimated 800 thousand metric tons of carbon equivalent (MTCE) were released in the process of making approximately 50 billion new PET bottles from virgin rather than recycled materials. When the 54 billion wasted aluminum cans, 7 billion wasted HDPE bottles and jugs, and 29 billion glass bottles are considered, the total emissions of greenhouse gasses from new (“replacement”) container manufacturing comes to about 4.8 million tons, and the unnecessary expenditure of energy comes to 53.5 million barrels of crude oil equivalent.
There are a host of other environmental impacts too numerous to catalog here, but they include damage to wildlife and marine life, and air and water pollution associated with raw materials extraction, processing, and industrial container production; as well as landfilling and incineration.
SOURCE: The Container Recycling Institute
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