From Crisis to Correction: How Industry Can Stabilize PET Recycling
Part 2 of the Recycling in America PET series, moves beyond diagnosing the challenge and focuses on what the industry can do now to stabilize the system — and what it will take to build long-term resilience.
Since the last PET webinar in February, rPET market conditions have worsened. Domestic reclaimer capacity has tightened further, including the closure of Evergreen, North America’s third‑largest PET reclaimer, which wiped out roughly 4 billion rPET bottles of annual capacity. Each loss makes the system more fragile—raising landfill risk and underscoring how dependent PET recycling is on strong, stable U.S. end market demand.
Risk is now moving upstream, with impacts at MRFs and early warning signs in communities.