中文A system that almost broke
Early in 2026, the warning was blunt: America’s plastic bottle recycling was in trouble. PET — the poster child of US packaging recycling — was buckling. About 25% of the recycled PET used in the country was coming from overseas, and that dependency had already pushed five of thirty US reclaimers to shutter parts of their plants. When Packaging Digest’s Lisa McTigue Pierce sounded the alarm, it was not hype. It was a system flashing red.
So we went back to the people tracking it closest — Katherine Huded, executive director of strategic engagement at The Recycling Partnership (TRP) — and asked the obvious question: how bad is it now?
The slightly better news
“It’s somewhat more stable than it was in February,” Huded said, “but the market is still under real pressure.” The reclaimers are no longer closing at the alarming pace seen early in the year. That is a low bar, she admitted — “but it matters because losing domestic recycling capacity is hard to reverse.” Once a reclaimer’s lights go out, the infrastructure, the jobs, and the supply chain resilience go with them.
There is a faint positive signal too: some domestic reclaimers are being qualified with new customers. Huded was careful not to overstate it — demand has not surged — but it shows brands are still weighing domestic recycled PET as part of their mix. rPlanet Earth in California, for example, has been working to reopen, though it is not fully operational yet.
The honest framing: better than February, but not turned the corner.
The war nobody expected to help
Here is the twist nobody predicted. The Iran war — by rattling virgin plastic pricing — created slight relief for domestic rPET. When virgin resin gets volatile and expensive, recycled material looks comparatively more attractive, and some buyers drift home. “Geopolitics and other factors that can create disruptions in global supply chains highlight the need for resilient domestic supply chains,” Huded noted.
But she was quick to add the caveat that should be stamped on every headline about this: the underlying market problem was there before the war, and it will still be there after. Reclaimers were closing before the conflict began. A temporary pricing quirk is not a strategy.
The real fix is boring and hard
The root issue is uncomfortable. There is high-quality, cheap, readily available rPET from around the world, especially Asia. Several US states now have PCR (post-consumer recycled) mandates, so companies are hunting for more recycled content — but not necessarily North American recycled content. “What’s most important right now, especially for the North American recycling system, is that it be North American PCR,” Huded said.
Her prescription is straightforward and unglamorous: producers should make commitments to domestic rPET now, even partial ones. A portion of PCR demand locked to North American material creates certainty for reclaimers, strengthens feedstock supply, and builds resilience. Pair that with attention to policy — seven states have now passed EPR (extended producer responsibility) laws, including California, the world’s fifth-largest economy — and the structural support the system has lacked for decades may finally arrive.
Reasons to actually believe
Huded is “absolutely optimistic.” Europe’s years of EPR have delivered markedly higher recycling rates, and watching seven US states — led by California — pass similar laws is, in her words, “a promising future for the US recycling system, which has needed infrastructure and support to improve.”
That optimism is not naive. It is anchored in momentum: EPR passing, PCR mandates arriving, global brands committing, and consumers who still want to recycle. The danger is complacency — reading “things eased” and assuming the crisis passed. It did not. It paused.
What packaging teams should do
If you specify recycled content, the window is open but not forever. Three moves:
- Commit a share to North American rPET, even if only part of your PCR. Certainty is what reclaimers need to survive.
- Sign longer-term contracts where you can. Stable demand is the single best antidote to capacity loss.
- Engage on EPR design now. The rules being written today will decide whether domestic recycling actually gets built — or just gets talked about.
A fragile system just caught its breath. The worst thing everyone could do is mistake the exhale for recovery.
Source: Packaging Digest — “Pressure on US PET Recycling System Eases — for Now” (8 September 2026).
