Dive Brief:

• About 48 million more people have access to PP recycling compared to 2020, according to a report from the Recycling Partnership’s Polypropylene Recycling Coalition. The report is the first since the coalition started in 2020, and it covers efforts to improve polypropylene recycling in the United States through grants and other initiatives.
• Across the country, community recycling program acceptance has increased by 11% since 2020, according to the report. The coalition has spent $15 million in grant funding for 60 projects over the last four years, mainly to upgrade recycling facilities and improve community access and engagement around PP recycling, TRP says. 
• The coalition says there’s growing demand for post-consumer recycled polypropylene, but only 8% is recycled nationally each year. It wants to raise that rate by 5% by 2026, in part by spending another $10 million in 2025 as part of a “comprehensive” plan for $55 million in investments on PP-related projects.

Dive Insight:

The Polypropylene Recycling Coalition aims to work with stakeholders like resin suppliers, manufacturers and recycling processors to improve PP recovery and better develop end markets for such material. Its recent progress report shows incremental improvements, but the group says more action is needed to further advance domestic recycled PP markets.

The coalition, made up of members from major brands and plastics groups, has primarily used grant funding as a mechanism to advance those goals. Since 2020, it has awarded 60 grants to MRFs, secondary sorters and reclaimers in 24 states, which TRP says led to about 64 million pounds of incremental polypropylene recycled annually.  

“We know there is significant opportunity to continue to expand the demand for recycled polypropylene, spur investments in access, education and infrastructure, and create a more robust market for this versatile material,” said Brittany LaValley, Vice President of Materials Advancement at The Partnership, in a statement.

The coalition says it’s critical to increase the number of community recycling programs that can accept PP in their streams. In 2022, How2Recycle, the instructional labeling program operated by environmental nonprofit GreenBlue, deemed polypropylene rigid containers “widely recyclable.” That distinction means the items are accepted by at least 60% of U.S. recycling facilities. 

TRP says the acknowledgment of PP as “widely recyclable” is key to keeping the material out of landfills and reducing recycling confusion for residents. It also helps legitimize certain PP material as recyclable in states that are working to establish statewide “accepted materials” lists, such as Oregon and California.

However, PP recycling has been the source of tension for some environmentalists, including Greenpeace. It challenged How2Recycle’s “widely recyclable” declaration in 2022, expressing skepticism for the organization's metrics. Greenpeace said at the time that only 30% of Americans had access to recycling systems that could accept the material.

The coalition has recently focused some of its grant funding on “dedicated polypropylene recycling” projects to strengthen access, according to the report. That includes Recology’s Sonoma Marin facility in California, which used coalition grant funding to partially fund a $35 million facility modernization completed in early 2024.

"Where we operate, it does feel that the markets for polypropylene are well established,” said Julia Mangin, Recology’s head of sustainability, in the Coalition report. “It was a priority for us to be able to leverage any technology that would make it even easier to collect."

The coalition continues to eye state policy as another driver of both recycling rates and market demand for the material. California’s SB 54, the wide-ranging EPR for packaging law, will require a 65% recycling rate for single-use packaging and food ware by 2032. 

Meanwhile, New Jersey’s recycled content law for certain containers and packaging went into effect earlier this year. The coalition says it provided grant funding to help upgrade recycling equipment at Ocean County’s Northern Recycling Center, a move meant to help collect more polypropylene to meet demand from “multiple domestic buyers.”

This story first appeared in the Waste Dive: Recycling newsletter. Sign up for the weekly emails here.