Placing an item into a blue bin suggests a clear outcome: the material will be transformed into a new product. This assumption overlooks the complex journey materials take after they leave the curb. Recycling is not a guaranteed process but a sophisticated system involving collection, sorting, market demand, and reprocessing. A significant portion of what is collected never makes it to the manufacturing stage, highlighting a gap between public participation and actual material recovery. Understanding this difference is key to grasping the true percentage of material that gets recycled.
The Overall National Recycling Rate
The official aggregate recycling rate for Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) is approximately 32.1%. This figure, reported by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and based on 2018 data, represents the total amount of residential and commercial waste that was either recycled or composted. The rate has remained relatively stable over the past decade, indicating a plateau in the overall recovery of materials from the waste stream.
The calculation is based on the weight of all materials entering the waste stream versus the weight successfully processed into marketable commodities. This percentage includes materials ranging from paper and plastics to yard trimmings, which are often composted. While some estimates suggest the total recovery rate could be closer to 38.9% when considering a broader scope of materials, this single national number masks the extreme variability in success across different material types.
Rate Variance by Material Type
The success of recycling varies drastically depending on the material’s physical properties and economic market. Certain materials are inherently more valuable and easier to reprocess, leading to significantly higher recycling rates. For instance, corrugated cardboard has a high recycling rate, reaching approximately 96.5% in 2018, due to its strong market demand and clean fiber composition.
Aluminum has a high recovery rate, with the rate for beverage cans hovering around 50.4%. Aluminum is a valuable commodity because it can be recycled indefinitely without losing quality. Reprocessing aluminum requires up to 95% less energy than manufacturing new aluminum, creating a strong economic incentive for its recovery. Paper and paperboard also see a robust rate, with over 68% of the material recovered, driven by established infrastructure and continuous demand from paper mills.
In contrast, other materials face significant physical and market challenges that depress their recovery rates. Plastics, despite being widely collected, have one of the lowest rates, with only about 5% to 6% of the total plastic waste generated in the U.S. being recycled in 2021. The issue stems from the diverse chemical composition of plastic resins, which cannot be easily mixed during reprocessing. Furthermore, plastic degrades in quality with each recycling cycle.
Glass is another material with a widely fluctuating rate, sometimes reported between 25% to 41.4%. Although glass is infinitely recyclable, its heavy weight makes transportation expensive. Its tendency to break during collection and sorting causes contamination. When broken, the mixed-color glass loses much of its value as it is difficult to separate back into the clear, green, and amber streams.
Factors That Prevent Material From Being Recycled
Even when a technically recyclable item is placed in a collection bin, several operational and economic factors can prevent it from being processed into a new product. One primary failure point is contamination, where non-recyclable items or dirty materials are mixed with the recyclables. This contamination is often the result of “wishcycling,” where consumers place items in the bin hoping they are recyclable.
At a Materials Recovery Facility (MRF), inbound contamination can be as high as 15% to 20% in some regions, severely hindering the sorting processes. Food residue, for instance, can soak into paper and cardboard fibers, making them unusable for manufacturing and forcing the rejection of entire bales. Flexible plastics, such as grocery bags and plastic film, are also a major contaminant. They wrap around sorting equipment, causing operational shutdowns and requiring workers to manually cut them free.
Beyond contamination, the economic viability of the recovered material plays a decisive role in its ultimate fate. MRFs operate as businesses, and the material they sort must meet strict quality specifications required by end-market buyers. When the commodity market price for a material is low, it may become financially unprofitable for the MRF to spend the time cleaning and baling it. The material may be rejected because the cost of processing exceeds the revenue it would generate.
A lack of local infrastructure also prevents materials from being recycled, even if they are technically accepted in the collection program. Many smaller or older MRFs lack the sophisticated optical scanners and robotics needed to efficiently sort complex or low-value plastics. If a local facility cannot process the material and cannot find an affordable buyer for reprocessing elsewhere, the collected items are treated as waste. Global policy shifts, such as high-quality standards imposed by countries that historically imported U.S. waste, have further raised the bar for material purity, increasing the volume of rejected material at the MRF.
What Happens to Rejected Materials
Materials collected but ultimately rejected by the MRF or those with no viable end market still require disposal. Once a material is sorted out as a contaminant, or an entire bale fails to meet a buyer’s purity standards, its final destination is typically a landfill. Landfills are highly engineered sites where waste is buried and compacted, serving as the default destination for the majority of Municipal Solid Waste that is not recycled.
Another common fate for rejected material is incineration, often referred to as Waste-to-Energy. In this process, the waste is burned to generate heat and electricity, recovering some energy value from the material. However, incineration permanently removes the material from the resource cycle. This means the original commodity is lost, and virgin resources must be used to replace it.
The environmental consequences of this disposal are significant. When organic contaminants, such as food scraps, end up in landfills, they decompose without oxygen and release methane, a potent greenhouse gas. Incineration reduces landfill volume but releases air emissions and generates ash that must also be landfilled. Collected materials that are not successfully reprocessed ultimately contribute to both land pollution and atmospheric emissions.