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Waste reduction fast facts: Plastic

Garbage and recycling  ›  Resources for schools  ›  Fast facts about waste reduction  ›  Plastic

This resource is not exhaustive nor is it all-inclusive, but can be cited and dated from primary and secondary sources. To find out more about the methodology or accuracy, contact the referenced source.

Metro does not validate nor endorse any of these facts.

• Plastic generation increased tenfold from 1960 to 2000. –EPA, “Municipal Solid Waste in the United States: 2000 Final Report,” EPA 530-R-02-001M, 2000
  www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/msw99.htm#links
• Electronics, health care, construction, transportation, automotive, and food packaging industries use the most plastic products. –Environmental Protection Agency, “Profile of the Rubber and Plastic Industry, 2^nd Edition,” EPA/310-R-05-003, February 2005
  http://www.epa.gov/compliance/resources/publications/assistance/sectors/notebooks/rubplasn.pdf
• It’s estimated that Americans go through about a hundred billion plastic bags a year, or 360 bags per year for every man, woman and child in the country. –Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash, Elizabeth Royte, Little, Brown and Company, 2005
• Five 2-liter recycled PET bottles produce enough fiberfill to make a ski jacket. –Environmental Protection Agency, 2002
  www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/reduce/wstewise/wrr/factoid.htm
• Toothbrushes represent more than 100 million pounds of plastic waste each year. –Office of the Federal Enviro. Executive, White House task force on recycling, “Recycling for the Future,” June 1999
• In 2003, plastics accounted for 11 percent of the total materials discarded in the U.S. by weight. –EPA, “Municipal Solid Waste in the United States: 2003 Facts and Figures,” 2003
  http://www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/muncpl/pubs/msw05rpt.pdf
• In the Portland metro region, plastics accounted for 12 percent of the total materials discarded in 2002 by weight. –Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, Waste Composition Study, 2002
• The 2003 recovery rate for plastic soda, water and other PET (#1) bottles fell for the eighth consecutive year since 1995. The recovery rate was 39.7 percent in 1995 and 19.6 percent in 2003. –National Association for PET Container Recycling (NAPCOR), 2003 Report on Post Consumer PET Container Recycling Activity, Final Report
  http://www.napcor.com/2003_Report.pdf
• In 2002, only 11 percent of plastic water bottles were recycled in the U.S. –Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash, Elizabeth Royte, Little, Brown and Company, 2002
• Bottled water is the single largest growth area among all beverages. Per capita consumption has more that doubled over the last decade. –Beverage Marketing Corporation, 2005
  http://www.beveragemarketing.com/
• About 1.3 million tons of PET (#1) bottles went into the trash or were littered in 2002, more than double the amount wasted in 1995. –Container Recycling Institute, “The 10 cent Incentive to Recycling,” Jenny Gitlitz and Pat Franklin, 3^rd Edition, 2004
• Plastics used in durable goods (such as cars, electronics, and appliances) account for the largest proportion by weight of plastics in U.S. municipal solid waste. –Environmental Protection Agency, “Fact Sheet, Recycling the Hard Stuff,” EPA 530-F-02-023, July 2002
  http://www.epa.gov/
• Although recycling is the most common method of plastic waste pollution prevention, less than one percent of all plastics products are recycled in the U.S. –Environmental Protection Agency, “Profile of the Rubber and Plastic Industry, 2^nd Edition,” EPA/310-R-05-003, February 2005
  http://www.epa.gov/compliance/resources/publications/assistance/sectors/notebooks/rubplasn.pdf
• Of the estimated 22.4 million tons of plastics produced in the United States in 1998, only about 5.4 percent were recovered for recycling. –Environmental Protection Agency, “Fact Sheet, Recycling the Hard Stuff,” EPA 530-F-02-023, July 2002
  http://www.epa.gov/
• The recycling rate for rigid plastic containers in Oregon climbed slightly in 2003 to 27 percent. –Oregon Department of Environmental Quality, “Rigid Plastic Container Recycling Rate Report,” 2003
  http://www.deq.state.or.us/wmc/solwaste/documents/rpc2003-05reprot.pdf
• Producing new plastic from recycled material uses only two-thirds of the energy required to manufacture it from raw materials. –Environmental Protection Agency, 2002
  www.epa.gov/epaoswer/non-hw/reduce/wstewise/wrr/factoid.htm
• The number of plastics recycling businesses has nearly tripled over the past several years, with more than 1,700 businesses handling and reclaiming post-consumer plastics. –American Plastics Council, 2004
• In 2003, U.S. manufacturers consumed 552 million pounds of post-consumer recycled PET (#1) plastic. Fiber product manufacturers (which include carpet makers) used 54 percent of the material, followed by food and beverage bottle manufacturers at 19 percent, and the strapping industry at 14 percent. Sheet and film producers, nonfood bottle makers and engineered resin producers used 6 percent, 4 percent and 2 percent respectively. –National Association for PET Container Recycling (NAPCOR), 2003 Report on Post Consumer PET Container Recycling Activity, Final Report
  http://www.napcor.com/2003_Report.pdf
• Forty-five percent of recycled HDPE (#2) bottles go into making new bottles. The plastic pipe industry consumes 14 percent of the recycled HDPE. Other strong markets for HDPE are lawn and garden products (such as edging), plastic lumber (decks, benches, picnic tables), film and sheet, and a variety of injection molded products (buckets, crates and automobile parts). –American Plastics Council, 2002 National Post-Consumer Plastics Recycling Report
• In an EPA ranking of the twenty chemicals whose production generates the most total hazardous waste, five of the top six are chemicals commonly used by the plastic industry. –Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash, Elizabeth Royte, Little, Brown and Company, 2005
• According to the EPA Toxic Release Inventory Public Data Release for 2002, the manufacture of rubber and plastics products industry released over 71 million pounds of pollutants. –Environmental Protection Agency, “Profile of the Rubber and Plastic Industry, 2^nd Edition,” EPA/310-R-05-003, February 2005
  http://www.epa.gov/compliance/resources/publications/assistance/sectors/notebooks/rubplasn.pdf
• The plastics industry is second only to the chemical industry in generating toxic releases that damage the ozone layer, emitting more than 12 million pounds of ozone depleting chemicals in 1994. –Environmental Protection Agency, Toxics Release Inventory, page 196, 1994
• Production of low-density polyethylene (used to make many kinds of packaging) generates 62-92 pounds of organic pollutants per ton of product manufactured. In 1995, this amounted to approximately 500 million pounds of pollutants that needed to be burned, recycled or discharged. –Chemical and Engineering News, June 24, 1996
• In 1999 marine researcher Charles Moore found six pounds of floating plastic for every pound of naturally occurring zooplankton in the North Pacific. He repeated the study in 2002 and found ten pounds of plastic for each pound of zooplankton. –Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash, Elizabeth Royte, Little, Brown and Company, 2005
• Each year in the North Pacific alone, nearly 100,000 marine mammals are killed by ingesting or getting tangled in plastic debris. –World Watch, March/April 2002
  www.worldwatch.org/mag/2002/15-02.html
• Plastic pellets, which are unintentionally released into oceans during production, transport or disposal, can carry levels of pollution up to one million times more concentrated than that of surrounding seawater. –World Watch, March/April 2002
  www.worldwatch.org/mag/2002/15-02.htm
• Polyvinyl chloride, commonly known as "PVC" or "vinyl," is one of the most common synthetic materials. Dioxin (the most potent carcinogen known), ethylene dichloride and vinyl chloride are unavoidably created in production of PVC and can cause severe health problems. –Healthy Building Network, “PVC in Buildings, Hazards and Alternatives” 2003
  http://www.healthybuilding.net/pvc/HBN_FS_PVC_in_Buildings.pdf
• According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the top three sources of dioxin emissions are municipal solid waste incinerators, backyard burn barrels and medical waste incinerators. This is due primarily to the amount of PVC in the waste stream. –Center for Health, Environment and Justice, “PVC and Solid Waste Disposal” (Accessed 8/05)
  http://www.safealternatives.org/solidwaste.html
• Over 14 billion pounds of PVC are currently produced each year in North America (about 75 percent is used in construction materials). –Healthy Building Network, "PVC in Buildings, Hazards and Alternatives" 2003
  http://www.healthybuilding.net/pvc/HBN_FS_PVC_in_Buildings.pdf
• The multitudes of additives in PVC make large-scale post consumer recycling nearly impossible. The Association of Post Consumer Plastics Recyclers declared it a contaminant in 1998. –Healthy Building Network, “PVC in Buildings, Hazards and Alternatives” 2003
  http://www.healthybuilding.net/pvc/HBN_FS_PVC_in_Buildings.pdf