Whatever the name, recycling of these plastic products spiked by 27 percent in 2014 in the United States, according to statistics from the American Chemistry Council.

The 27-percent jump from 2013 to 2014 translates into an additional 276 million pounds being recycled from one year to the next. A total of 1.28 billion pounds of the material were recycled in 2014, ACC reports.

“There are strong programs to grow rigid recycling. One of the big issues in the case of non-bottle rigids is we’ve seen that the material is very valuable and there are strong markets for it. We’ve seen collection of the material and access for the material grow dramatically,” said Keith Christman, managing director of plastics markets for ACC.

Increases in recycling programs as well as standardization of terminology surrounding the collection and recycling of these non-bottle rigids have both helped recycling numbers increase, he said.

Read Full Article