Abstract

Plastics accounted for 11.3% or 26.7 million tons (53.3 billion lb (24.63 kg)) of the > 236 million tons of municipal solid waste generated in the United States in 2003. Other countries also generate large amounts of plastic wastes. While poly(ethylene terephthalate) recycling is best known to consumers, high density polyethylene, other grades of polyethylene, polystyrene, polypropylene and other plastics are also recycled. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved some types of poly(ethylene terephthalate) for food contact applications permitting the use of this recycled plastic in high value applications. The amount of plastics recycled has increased steadily since the early 1990s although the fraction of plastics recycled has varied. This variation is caused in part by variation in the price of crude oil and natural gas, the chemical feedstocks used to make most plastics. With higher oil and natural gas prices, the economics of recycling plastics compares more favorably with producing new plastics directly from these feedstocks. An international trade in recycled plastics, particularly poly(ethylene terephthalate) has developed and accounts for a growing fraction of the used plastics recovered in the United States. Efforts are growing to recycle plastics used in electronics: computers, printers, household appliances, etc, and increasing numbers of these devices reach the end of their useful life and are discarded.