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The Blueprint for Credible Action on Plastic Pollution: Three Essential Ingredients for a Robust Polypropylene Recycling Supply Chain

  • Date: 28 January 2025
  • Author: Brittany LaValley, Vice President of Materials Advancement, The Recycling Partnership

A couple of years ago, if you drank a bottle of iced tea in Ocean County, New Jersey, it would have been the rare polypropylene item that even had a chance of being recycled. That's because the system was relying on one of the few workers at the county's recycling center to easily recognize and capture polypropylene packaging by hand. The rest—yogurt tubs, takeout containers, and other polypropylene packaging—often ended up at the landfill.

While that scenario is one of a number facilities face, sortation at a facility is only one part of a much larger opportunity for polypropylene recycling. The US generates about two billion pounds of polypropylene waste annually and currently only recycles 8%. Capturing this material requires building out stronger domestic supply chains supported by increased collection and sortation capabilities, and ensuring end markets can repurpose the post-consumer material for use in new products.

At The Recycling Partnership (TRP), we are working to establish and expand such supply chains. The investment needed to do that is large, but so are the prospective returns: Over five years, $17 billion applied to proven recycling solutions would deliver an estimated $30.8 billion in economic benefits that extend over a decade.

For polypropylene, it is with full value chain engagement and investment that we have been able to make remarkable strides through the Polypropylene Recycling Coalition. The Coalition's efforts over the past four years have helped achieve new or improved access to polypropylene recycling for 48 million people and generate 64 million new pounds of recycled material per year.

Ocean County's Northern Recycling Center, one of 60 Polypropylene Recycling Coalition grantees across the country, is now on track to recycle at least 26 times the amount of polypropylene it did in 2022, thanks to new equipment that allows for the automated sortation of this material.

As we have learned through TRP’s material-specific coalitions, creating supply chains for under-recycled materials requires a combination of three conditions.

1. Consensus

In 2020, domestic recycling for polypropylene was struggling following the implementation of China National Sword. So much so that the broadly recognized How2Recycle® labeling system downgraded it from “widely recyclable” to “check locally." The first step to reversing this trend and securing a place for polypropylene in the circular economy, was garnering support to invest in diverting more polypropylene from landfills. TRP, Association of Plastic Recyclers, Closed Loop Partners, and GreenBlue demonstrated industry support by coming out with a joint statement highlighting the issue. TRP then rallied all members of the polypropylene value chain facing the same challenges to form the Polypropylene Recycling Coalition.

Consumers are already on board: Eight out of 10 people believe recycling makes a difference. With this knowledge and key industry players ready to act, the key piece left was policy. Industry organizations like World Wildlife Fund and TRP advocate for extended producer responsibility laws and other recycling-friendly policies to support the full residential recycling system.

2. Targeted Investment

The Coalition has committed over $22 million in grants across 26 states. These funds are supporting crucial community recycling programs and infrastructure needs to collect, sort and process polypropylene for end markets. With a goal to drive a 5% increase in the national recycling rate for polypropylene by the end of 2026, TRP's strategic focus is on meeting recycling mandates in West Coast policy states.

Accomplishing this requires deploying $10 million throughout 2025, part of a comprehensive strategy to devote a total of $55 million toward modernizing recycling infrastructure and expanding polypropylene capture nationwide over the next two years.

3. Collaborative Action

Collaboration takes several forms for TRP’s material-specific coalitions. While funders are a critical part of the equation to ensure investments can be made in the system, equally as important are coalition Advisors. These are industry organizations working together towards the same mission - to stop valuable materials from being wasted. This cross-industry connectivity supports the ability to align efforts to increase impact. Key advisors have included World Wildlife Fund, Association of Plastic Recyclers, The Sustainable Packaging Coalition, U.S. Plastics Pact, The Foodservice Packaging Institute and Closed Loop Partners.

An important milestone in the journey for the Polypropylene Recycling Coalition was the 2022 How2Recycle® upgrade of key polypropylene formats to “widely recyclable” in the US. This upgrade required deep collaboration with The Sustainable Packaging Coalition and its How2Recycle team and served as a demonstration of the achievements that come from the partnerships being forged through the Polypropylene Recycling Coalition’s efforts.

While TRP has led the charge and our advisors have played a critical role, the Coalition's members have paved the way for action and investment. They have demonstrated to the industry and a growing cohort of Coalition members what is possible when we come together to support the system. Key to achieving the goals of the Coalition is the understanding from members that they must take their “organization hats" off and think about system needs in service to our north star: building a better recycling system.

What's Next

As the landscape for polypropylene recycling evolves, so does the Coalition's work. Over the past four years, we have established that polypropylene can and should be recycled at scale. The grantees pioneering this shift are providing data that helps us understand what's working, what's not, and where the continued opportunities to strengthen polypropylene recycling are.

Most importantly, we now have a model for how to support the supply chains needed for a circular economy. With these three essential pillars in place—consensus, targeted investment, and collaborative action—we can meet communities and processors wherever they are on the journey to improving recycling.


This is a guest blog from one of our longstanding strategic partner organizations, The Recycling Partnership. WWF sits on the Polypropylene Recycling Coalition's Advisory Committee. The views in this blog do not necessarily represent those of WWF.

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