United States | The recycling rate for PET bottles has improved for three years in a row, yet US capacity has not expanded significantly in that time because more than 50 percent of the PET material collected is being shipped overseas. In 2005, 91.1 percent of the PET exported from the United States went to China, as Chinese buyers are willing to pay up to 25% more than American buyers. US companies have imported about 104 million pounds in each of the past three years, including 97 million pounds last year.
‘We are importing 25-30 percent more material than we did five years ago-which amounts to 25-30 percent of our needs,’ says a PET reclaiming executive. Steve Alexander, Executive Director of the Association of Postconsumer Plastic Recyclers, says a tight PET supply is strained even further by the amount of material being exported.
‘If we could get more of that material, it would encourage more reclaimers to put in new technology and possibly add capacity,’ he says. About two-thirds of United States’ PET recycling capacity resides at companies that reprocess the material for their own use, leaving commercial markets with roughly 276 million pounds of capacity. Fibre applications account for almost half of the end market for recycled PET, followed by food and beverage containers at 16.3 percent and strapping at 15.4 percent. More than 76 percent of the amount of PET used in 2006, about 4.25 billion pounds, was unrecycled versus 3.9 billion pounds in 2005.
Acknowledgement
www.plasticsrecycling.org
