 he Environmental Defense Fund (EDF)
has released a detailed analy- sis of the latest recycling figures for plastics
packaging based on data reported by the American Plastics Council (APC)
that documents an actual decline in an already low plastics recycling rate.
 EDF's analysis, Something to Hide: The
Sorry State of Plastics Recycling, stands in stark contrast to the rosy,
highly selective picture painted by APC in its press materials issued last
spring months before the council's full report was completed. EDF obtained
a copy of the report this year despite APC's new policy denying the public
access to its report.
"When APC's numbers are examined,
it becomes clear why they would want to hide this report," said Dr.
Richard Denison, EDF senior scientist and author of the analysis. "It
vividly documents the continuing neglect of plastics recycling as the abandoned
stepchild of the plastics industry."
EDF's analysis reveals the following
facts about the current state of plastics recycling: Less than 10% of plastics
packaging is being recycled. As shown in the attached chart, that rate is
a third that of the next closest packaging category, glass. Again in contrast
to all other major packaging types, growth in recycling of plastics packaging
has been at a snail's pace over the last decade, capped with an actual decline
over the past year.
Even plastic bottle recycling the mainstay
of plastics recycling and the only numbers APC mentions in its public materials
declined in 1996. Recycling of plastic soda bottles the industry's only
real success story dropped sharply for the second consecutive year, from
45 percent in 1994 and 41 percent in 1995 to 34 percent in 1996 the lowest
level since 1990.
Of particular note is the recycling
rate for polystyrene packaging and food service items, which has hovered
around 1.5 percent for the last several years, a rate far below the polystyrene
industry's much-touted goal set in 1990 and abandoned last year of achieving
a 25 percent recycling rate by 1995.
EDF's analysis found that the cumulative
effect of this poor showing by the plastics industry year after year was
most telling of the state of plastics recycling. Each year from 1990 to
1996 for every additional pound of plastic packaging that was recycled,
nearly 4 pounds of additional virgin plastic packaging was produced on average.
All told this decade, over 13 times more virgin plastic packaging was produced
than was recycled.
"Producers of every other type
of packaging glass, aluminum, steel and paper have stepped up to the plate
by investing the dollars needed to incorporate recovered materials back
into the mainstream of production," said Denison. "The plastics
industry sinks its dollars into its latest national PR campaign to tell
us all the ways that 'plastics make it possible,' while trying to make it
impossible for the public to learn the truth about how little it has done
for recycling."  | 
Environmental Defense Fund exposes "sorry state" of plastics
recycling