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Sustainable Packaging and PET: U.S. Flows, Material Recovery Facilities, and Recycling Processes
Citation:
Smith, Raymond L. Sustainable Packaging and PET: U.S. Flows, Material Recovery Facilities, and Recycling Processes. Sustainable Packaging Conference 2024: Navigating the Pathways to Zero-Waste, East Lansing, MI, February 12 - 13, 2024.
Impact/Purpose:
This abstract describes a presentation for the Sustainable Packaging Conference 2024: Navigating the Pathways to Zero-Waste, to be held in February of 2024. The presentation is on research that supports Sustainable Materials Management in EPA’s Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery. Packaging is a postconsumer use stream where some plastics are recycled. This effort describes flows of plastics that are collected, sorted, reclaimed, further processed, and converted for downstream uses. An example case study is described for polyethylene terephthalate (PET, plastic #1). The analysis points to where postconsumer packaging ends up. What fraction is recycled? What products are recycled? And into what streams and products does recycled PET end up? Information about these flowrates and the associated resource use and releases to the environment supports efforts in Sustainable Materials Management, where individual generation, recycling, composting, combustion with energy recovery, and landfilling flows are tracked within the non-hazardous waste management hierarchy.
Description:
Plastic flows through the economy have increased from approximately 2 Mt/year in the 1950’s to 368 Mt in 2019, with prospects for quadrupling further by 2050. A large amount of these plastics is made into packaging, so an emphasis on the sustainability of plastic packaging is worthwhile. This effort will examine barriers to increased recycling of plastics as well as the processes involved and the flows of plastic through the system. Throughputs for material recovery facilities (MRFs) and downstream processing at reclaimers are quantified to model input-output flows such as resource use and releases to the environment [1]. Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is of particular interest because it is the most widely recycled plastic. PET finds use in plastic bottles, thermoforms for food packaging, carpeting, and textiles, but only the bottles are regularly recycled. As packaging PET is recycled it is converted into a distribution of new products such as fibers, bottles, and films. Researchers are encouraged to evaluate this recycling system which, while only partially manifested due to limitations on collection, processing, and use of PET, offers potential for maintaining materials in a circular economy. [1] Smith, R.L., Takkellapati, S., and Riegerix, R.C. (2022), “Recycling of Plastics in the United States: Plastics Material Flows and Polyethylene Terephthalate Recycling Processes,” ACS Sustain. Chem. Eng., 10, 2084-2096. DOI: 10.1021/acssuschemeng.1c06845 The views expressed in this presentation are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views or policies of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.