Why Is PET Plastic Recycling Infrastructure Also Climate Infrastructure?

The short answer: PET bottle collection and recycling infrastructure helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions by turning used bottles into recycled PET, or rPET, for new packaging and other products. Stronger collection supplies manufacturers with lower-carbon recycled material, reduces waste, and supports domestic manufacturing.

When policymakers discuss climate infrastructure, they often focus on renewable energy, transportation, buildings, and manufacturing. Recycling systems may not come to mind right away. But they should.

For polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic—the recyclable material identified by the #1 inside the triangle ♳—collection and recycling infrastructure is essential to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Every PET bottle captured for recycling can become valuable raw material for new packaging and other products. Every bottle that is landfilled or otherwise lost represents material that can no longer contribute to a circular, lower-carbon manufacturing system.

That is why recycling infrastructure is also climate infrastructure.

How Does Recycling PET Help Reduce Emissions?

Recycling keeps valuable material in circulation and provides manufacturers with recycled PET, commonly called rPET. Our new research has found that using recycled PET to make new products results in 59% lower greenhouse gas emissions than using virgin (new) PET.

But manufacturers can use only the PET plastic that the recycling system successfully recovers. The process works as a connected system:

1. Consumers return or recycle their used PET bottles.
2. Collection programs capture those bottles instead of sending them to landfills.
3. Sorting facilities separate PET from other materials.
4. Reclaimers wash and process the recovered PET into clean recycled material.
5. Manufacturers use that recycled PET to make new bottles, containers, and other products.

When one part of the system underperforms, every part that follows is affected. If PET bottles are not collected, they cannot be sorted. If they are not sorted effectively, reclaimers receive less usable material. If reclaimers cannot access an adequate supply of quality material, manufacturers have less domestic recycled PET available to incorporate into new products.

Recycling’s climate benefits therefore begin long before a bottle reaches a recycling facility. They begin with the policies, programs, and infrastructure that determine whether the bottle is captured at all.

What Does PET Forward Tell Us About Recycling and Emissions?

NAPCOR commissioned Eastern Research Group (ERG), an independent environmental consulting firm with expertise in life cycle assessments, to examine how the greenhouse gas emissions associated with predominant US PET beverage bottle systems could change through 2050. For a broad overview of the resulting roadmap, PET Forward: A Decarbonization Roadmap for the PET Packaging Value Chain, read our earlier blog post: How Can Policymakers Help Reduce Emissions from PET Plastic Bottles?

The roadmap finds that life cycle greenhouse gas emissions intensity for the PET beverage bottle systems studied could decline by about 57% by 2050. Total annual emissions associated with the systems studied could fall by approximately 42%, even as the number of beverages packaged grows.

Those reductions do not come from a single policy, technology, or business practice. They result from multiple strategies working together, including:

• Increased collection and recycling
• Greater use of recycled PET
• Continued lightweighting
• Renewable and lower-carbon energy
• Manufacturing efficiency
• Improved bottle design
• Infrastructure investment
• Continued technological innovation

Collection and recycling are especially important because they connect circularity with manufacturing. Capturing more PET increases the supply of recycled material available to manufacturers, allowing the material already in circulation to help displace virgin resources.

In other words, recycling does more than keep bottles out of landfills; it supplies the raw material needed for lower-carbon manufacturing.

Which Policies Can Strengthen PET Recycling Infrastructure?

No single policy can address every part of the recycling system. Policymakers should instead consider how complementary approaches can improve collection, strengthen domestic processing, and support reliable end markets for recycled material.

Effective strategies can include:

• Well-designed deposit return systems (DRS): Beverage container deposit, aka recycling refund, programs can capture large volumes of clean, high-quality PET bottles that can be recycled into new packaging.
• Harmonized extended producer responsibility programs: Thoughtfully designed extended producer responsibility (EPR) policies can provide sustainable funding for collection, education, sorting, and recycling infrastructure while establishing clear performance expectations.
• Investment in sorting and processing infrastructure: Modern equipment, improved sortation, and expanded reclamation capacity can help recycling facilities recover more PET and produce higher-quality recycled material.
• Support for durable domestic end markets: Reliable demand for recycled PET gives recycling facilities and manufacturers greater certainty when making long-term investments.
• Recycled-content policies: Carefully structured recycled-content requirements can help strengthen demand, provided they are paired with policies that increase the domestic supply of recovered PET.
• Consistent measurement and transparency: Comparable data on collection, recycling, recycled-content use, and system performance allow policymakers and industry leaders to identify gaps and measure progress.

These approaches work best as parts of a coordinated system. A recycled-content requirement, for example, can increase demand for recycled material, but it cannot create more domestic supply unless collection and processing improve at the same time.

When PET bottles are collected and processed in the United States, that valuable material remains in the economy. Reclaimers turn those bottles into usable recycled material, manufacturers incorporate that material into new products, and businesses throughout the value chain benefit from a more reliable domestic supply.

Building a lower-carbon PET system means capturing more of that existing resource and creating the infrastructure necessary to keep it circulating.

What Is the Opportunity for Policymakers?

Policymakers can treat recycling as part of the country’s environmental, climate, manufacturing, and economic infrastructure.

That means looking beyond isolated recycling programs and considering the entire journey of a PET bottle: how it is designed, collected, sorted, processed, and returned to manufacturing.

It also means evaluating packaging policies according to measurable life cycle outcomes. Policies should help recover more recyclable material, reduce waste and emissions, strengthen domestic processing, and keep valuable resources in circulation.

PET already has the essential foundation: a recyclable material, strong demand for recycled content, and an established recycling system. The next step is to strengthen the connections among consumers, collection programs, recycling facilities, reclaimers, and manufacturers.

When policymakers invest in those connections, they are not just improving recycling; they are building the infrastructure for a more circular, resilient, and lower-carbon economy.

Explore PET Forward and learn more about the pathway to lower-emission PET plastic packaging.