A Look at 2024 Recycling Trends - Plastics, EPR and a Glance into 2025A Look at 2024 Recycling Trends - Plastics, EPR and a Glance into 2025

Greyparrot has released findings around 2024 recycling trends, based on what it learned leveraging its AI-driven waste analyzer to peer into 55 processing facilities across 20 countries. Here’s a recap of the main data points. Read on for more 2024 highlights, including a quick take on how commodities markets fared; a roundup of companies investing in recycling and which streams they are targeting; and new policies aiming to pump infrastructure.

Greyparrot recycling report

Over 6 billion PET bottles flowed into recycling facilities this year, representing the highest tonnage of a waste category to land in these plants. Relatively few of those PET bottles wound up on residue lines. They weren’t even in the top three waste categories that went unrecycled.

A deeper analysis of residuals found 35,000 tons of recyclable plastics were left behind, destined for burial or incineration. Greyparrot calls this finding a sign of “massive opportunity” to recover more value from hard-to-recycle plastic, with access to analytics and automation. Looking from the perspective of environmental impact, the report authors point out that each ton of recovered material cuts 1.5 tons of carbon.

Clear plastic containers and flexible film objects were among the most common uncaptured materials. Analyzer units also flagged over 7 billion flexible film objects, which are particularly hard to sort.

Metal scored high on the list of recoverables.  The analyzer spotted over 2 billion aluminum cans with fewer than 2.5 percent of metals turning up on the residue line.

Glass was missed even less frequently, making up 1.03 percent of the unrecycled materials.

The findings around metal and glass, the authors conclude, suggest a bulk of these materials are returned to the circular economy, whether captured at MRFs or through deposit return schemes.

Paper, cardboard, and other fibers were the least captured, accounting for 56 percent of what facilities sent to landfill or incineration. This signals opportunity for operators who can install fiber lines, Greyparrot  notes; for every ton of paper that they divert they will save one ton of CO2 emissions.

Commodities pricing

Greyparrot’s report tells part of the 2024 recycling story. Looking through another lens, here are extrapolations from Chaz Miller’s recap of how U.S. recycling markets made out in 2024:

Compared to December 2023, national average prices for curbside recyclables were higher for PET beverage bottles, natural HDPE containers, PP packages, aluminum cans, and residential mixed paper.

On the downside, prices dropped for colored HDPE, steel cans, and old corrugated containers.

Some broader recycling market trends

We aggregated details from this years’ news stories to highlight what streams businesses invested in; research and technologies to advance recycling; and new policies aiming to pump circularity.

Textile recycling. As fast fashion’s repercussions become increasingly clear, tech developers, brands, and manufacturers focus on curbing the pile up of clothing discards, whether through resale and takeback initiatives or advanced recycling technologies.

CARBIOS made headlines in October 2024 when it debuted what it says is the first t-shirt made completely from waste. It was done leveraging enzymes to break down polyester then reform it into virgin-like material. This year’s validation of this fiber-to-fiber recycling process was the culmination of two years of work supported by Patagonia, PUMA, PVH (parent company of Calvin Klein), On, and Salomon.

Some retailers are joining the effort. In July Target announced a chain-wide denim takeback event, offering a discount on new denim in exchange for old clothes.  And Goodwill and Reju, in collaboration with WM, announced plans to advance textile recycling in North America.

On the policy front, California passed a textile recycling extended producer responsibility (EPR) law requiring brands to fund collections, transportation, sorting, repair, and recycling of clothing and other textiles.

E-waste recycling. As electronics and batteries flood the market, then flood waste facilities, businesses capitalize on the opportunity to curb the onslaught.  Among transpirations, in the past few months New Jersey-based Onepak raised $20 million to advance its used electronics device return and resale platform.

Tide Rock acquired Global Electronics Recycling (GER), a Phoenix-based IT asset disposition and electronics recycling company, further expanding its portfolio of electronics recycling companies, including four enterprises it acquired between 2022 and 2023.

Organics recovery. More states are following California’s lead by establishing policies around organics management, with Washington state in the spotlight this year. Washington passed a law
focused on food donation and food packaging labeled as compostable; the law also requires food scrap collections for single-family residents in urbanized areas.

The private sector is homing in on food waste too. In December Divert commissioned a facility in Turlock, California that will leverage depackaging technology and anaerobic digestion to process 100,000 tons of unsold food a year, bringing the company closer to its goal to build 30 facilities across the U.S. within 100 miles of 80 percent of the population in coming years.

Others are targeting players across the supply chain. They have widely varying concepts from making products from food waste (this month Ecotone Renewables raised $3 million to scale its food waste-to-fertilizer technology)—to incentives for food waste-generating businesses (Therm Solutions just launched a novel food loss diversion carbon credit program available to grocers).

Plastic recycling. KW, reportedly the world’s largest recycler of HDPE and PP, continued expanding its reach, stating that its plastic processing facility has more  than 750 million tons of annual capacity and that it will add more lines over the next year or two.

New plastic processing innovations continue rolling to market, alongside research to find more novel recycling methods. West Virginia University received a $1 million federal grant this year to help fund a project leveraging microwave technology to recover chemicals from waste PP, aiming to make those chemicals available for reuse in new plastics. And University of Alabama researchers filed a patent application for a new chemical recycling process for PET, leveraging an organic compound to break it down.

The Recycling Partnership continued pouring grant monies into cities’ plastic recycling efforts, focusing especially on some of the harder to recycle PET types.

EPR. More states are considering and or implementing EPR, and they are taking a hard look at packaging in particular.

Oregon is set to launch packaging and paper EPR in 2025, and Maine is preparing to launch its stewardship program with a projected 2026 implementation date, while other states recently drafted text for similar bills. On the federal front, the U.S. EPA finalized its National Strategy to Prevent Plastic Pollution in 2024, which calls for developing a national EPR framework.

What does 2025 look like for recycling? Commodities pricing goes up and down so how the market will do remains unclear. But just the same the private and public sectors and academia continue pushing to advance this space. From EPR policies expecting manufacturers to pay into infrastructure and to design for recyclability—to voluntary and government recycled content requirements—to evolving technologies aiming to capture more and better quality materials, recycling stakeholders will likely have another busy year.