Californians recycled over 16 billion beverage containers in 2011

Californians recycled over 16 billion beverage containers in 2011

By Editorial Staff, Resource Recycling

California's beverage container recycling rate stayed essentially flat last year, but still reached gaudy heights according to a recently-released report by the state's Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery (CalRecycle).

According to CalRecycle's Biannual Report of Beverage Container Sales, Returns, Redemption, and Recycling Rates [1] the Golden State recovered 16.7 billion beverage containers in 2011, for an overall, program-wide recycling rate of 82 percent.

In order of reported rates from CalRecycle, the recycling rate for HDPE was 104 percent, aluminum was 97 percent, glass was 84 percent, 67 percent for PET, 16 percent for bi-metal containers and 15 percent or less for LDPE, PVC, PP, PS and other materials.

Resource Recycling reached out to several officials at CalRecycle for comment on the methodology used to calculate these numbers, but did not receive responses by press time.

"The California program is the largest beverage container recycling program in North America, recovering approximately one-fifth of all the beverage containers recycled in the U.S., annually," said Susan Collins, executive director of the Container Recycling Institute, to Resource Recycling. "In addition, this program recovers containers that are worth over $300 million in scrap value each year, which is a valuable economic boost for the Golden State."

Collins also noted that a less well-known fact about the program is that scrap values of aluminum and PET — which account for 83 percent of the containers in the program — are lower than the state-audited "cost to recycle," meaning that beverage manufacturers pay zero processing fees for these materials.

"Another little-known fact is that California curbside programs receive payments of over $100 million per year for collecting beverage containers," Collins said. "This is the largest program in the U.S. to financially support municipal curbside programs without payments by taxpayers or rate payers."

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