Collaboration across the supply chain is critical. This includes MRFs, haulers, communities, and companies with a steady force behind them making connections, supporting interest holders, and identifying partnership opportunities.
By Brittany LaValley
Nearly 2 billion pounds of polypropylene (#5) plastic enter U.S. homes each year, yet much of it ends up in landfills instead of being recycled. Why? As the complexity of the recycling stream has continued to increase, now more than ever, people need consistent and clear guidance on what they can recycle in their local program.
As the U.S. nonprofit solving recycling’s toughest challenges, The Recycling Partnership (The Partnership) recognized the unique complications of recycling polypropylene and established the Polypropylene Recycling Coalition (Coalition) in 2020. Its initial focus: enable MRFs to better process polypropylene so that it can be accepted for recycling in more community programs across the U.S.
After six years of building the processing foundation, the focus is now shifting toward community outreach and education to increase household recycling behavior. And we are not starting from scratch. The Partnership has more than a decade of field work, research, behavioral insights, and proven implementation that improves outcomes across local recycling programs throughout the country. That knowledge is being used to support the Coalition’s evolved focus, partnering with communities and processors to inform the public on how to recycle polypropylene better.
Foundation to Education
Recycling in the U.S. does not fall under a single system; rather, it is more than 9,000 local programs with differing guidelines that residents must navigate at the local level if they want to recycle. Understanding what each community accepts is essential to measuring the state of recycling. The Partnership’s National Recycling Database aggregates detailed, localized recycling information to improve national recycling efforts and support informed decisions on packaging and infrastructure.
The Partnership tackles system challenges that no single company, community, or policy can fix alone. When it came to polypropylene specifically, the Coalition examined years’ worth of data to identify gaps in the system: which MRFs needed upgrades to process polypropylene more efficiently, and which MRFs could process polypropylene but were still not seeing their communities recycle.
One MRF that needed a #5 processing upgrade was in Ocean County, NJ. In 2022, Ocean County’s Northern Recycling Center manually pulled almost 82,000 pounds of polypropylene from its single-stream facility, but knew it could increase its yield. The Northern Recycling Center installed an optical sorter with support from the Coalition, and in the second half of 2023, Ocean County reported capturing over 850,000 pounds of polypropylene—a more than 900 percent increase. The sorter’s ability to recognize and divert polypropylene means the county now routinely collects more polypropylene in one month than it did in an entire year.
This is an example of exceptional improvements in polypropylene recycling rates, but there is still a gap. Drawing from The Partnership’s on-the-ground experience and community work, the Coalition knows that access alone does not drive results. It takes the right type of messaging and communication to change behavior.
The Vital Relationship Between MRFs and Public Recycling Programs
No matter how much polypropylene a facility can process, recycling rates will only improve if the public knows how to recycle #5 plastic. In Ocean County, NJ, the Coalition conducted an education and outreach initiative to encourage more residents to recycle polypropylene at home so more material can be processed at the Northern Recycling Center.
Meanwhile, in St. Peters, MO, an investment by the Polypropylene Recycling Coalition supported upgrading equipment at the Recycle City materials recovery facility to expand acceptance of #5 plastic, as well as public education to strengthen local recycling systems. In just over one year, and with the addition of new household recycling carts, Recycle City’s contamination rate fell to 10 percent, nearly four times lower than the national average.
Where some organizations would call an improved contamination rate a win and move on, this was just the end of phase one of The Partnership’s work with St. Peters. Phase two includes a regional study across 50,000 households to establish a baseline for polypropylene recovery and test behaviorally informed messaging to learn what motivates residents to recycle more and better. Over four months (March to June), every household will receive one mailer per month. After each mailer drops, and again at the end of the campaign, the facility will run audits to measure exactly how much polypropylene is moving through the lines and whether recovery improves over the course of the campaign.
Driving the Urgency for Polypropylene Recycling
The Coalition’s progression from polypropylene infrastructure to education was not solely to close the recycling gap, but also to meet inevitable policy shifts such as the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act (SB54) in California. Signed in 2022, SB54 requires all single-use packaging and plastic food serviceware to be recyclable or compostable with a 65 percent recycling rate by 2032. If producers cannot meet that threshold, they could face fines or potential bans in the state. Even with strong polypropylene recycling access across the state, participation remains too low to meet mandated recycling rates. Capture for this material must increase more than 250 percent in order to meet mandates, which is driving the urgency for this critical pre-investment work.
Similarly, in Ocean City, NJ, the state’s Recycled Content Law went into effect in January 2024. It calls for increased recycled content in plastic packaging, helping strengthen markets for post-consumer recycled plastics. This change ensured the Northern Recycling Center has reliable manufacturing customers to buy the #5 plastic it recycles, completing the loop of a circular economy.
Recycling at Scale
The foundational work to improve polypropylene recycling rates across the country recently led to a major milestone. Until 2026, the vast majority of polypropylene cups were recyclable on a community-by-community, “Check Locally” basis. However, in February 2026, a collaboration among The Partnership, How2Recycle®, NextGen Consortium managed by Closed Loop Partners’ Center for the Circular Economy, Starbucks, and WM (91TV Management), announced that polypropylene cups had received a “Widely Recyclable” designation, meaning they can be accepted for recycling curbside by more than 60 percent of U.S. households.
Obtaining this designation for polypropylene cups was not just about earning a label. The Coalition has been doing the foundational work to build the infrastructure needed for MRFs to accept, sort, and market #5 plastic, making polypropylene recycling more accessible nationwide. That work includes $19 million in grant awards and hundreds of hours analyzing MRF recycling data to develop clear, practical best practices for how communities communicate polypropylene recycling to their residents.
No one organization can scale polypropylene recycling across the country on its own, though, which is why collaboration across the supply chain is critical. This includes MRFs, haulers, communities, and companies with a steady force behind them making connections, supporting interest holders, and identifying partnership opportunities. Other industry groups may conclude their work when the right players are in place, but the Coalition moves beyond advocacy and strategy to also deliver continued execution.
Critical Collaboration
The only way to solve recycling’s toughest challenges is together. Thanks to its members and organizations mentioned previously, the Coalition has accomplished two of its main goals: 1) Partnering with MRFs to scale acceptance and increase capture of polypropylene, and 2) Increasing community acceptance and resident participation through education and outreach, as well as better understanding the actual barriers in local recycling. This work is ongoing—and replicable.
Collaboration across the supply chain is what scales change, and we are building that momentum now. As we deepen partnerships, we welcome more. Let’s stay focused on the progress and move the needle on polypropylene recycling, together. | WA
As the Senior Vice President of Impact Strategy and Management, Brittany LaValley is responsible for playing a critical role in shaping and operationalizing The Recycling Partnership’s system-wide impact strategy by integrating insights from across the organization, with an emphasis on materials. With more than 20 years of broad-ranging industry experience and nearly 10 years working in the recycling industry, this experience has allowed her to support solutions for some of recycling’s toughest challenges. Brittany can be reached at [email protected].
References
• https://recyclingpartnership.org/data
• https://recyclingpartnership.org/building-on-a-history-of-commitment-to-recycling-ocean-county-new-jersey-case-study
• https://recyclingpartnership.org/access-end-markets-st-peters