About 8.7 percent of plastic waste generated in the United States gets recycled. That translates to roughly 3 million tons out of 35.7 million tons produced in a year, based on the most recent comprehensive data from the EPA. The rest, over 90 percent, ends up in landfills or is burned.
Where the Other 91 Percent Goes
Of the 35.7 million tons of plastic waste generated in 2018, the EPA tracked three destinations. About 27 million tons went straight to landfills, making plastic one of the largest and most persistent components of municipal solid waste. Another 5.6 million tons were combusted in waste-to-energy facilities, which generate electricity but also release emissions. Only 3.09 million tons were recycled.
That 8.7 percent recycling rate is far lower than other common materials. Paper and cardboard are recycled at roughly 68 percent, metals at around 34 percent. Plastic sits near the bottom, and the rate has barely budged in decades.
Some Plastics Are Recycled Far More Than Others
The recycling numbers look very different depending on which type of plastic you’re talking about. PET bottles and jars (the #1 plastic used for water bottles and soda containers) had a 29.1 percent recycling rate. HDPE natural bottles (the #2 plastic used for milk jugs and detergent containers) came in at 29.3 percent. Those are the two types your curbside bin is most likely to actually process into new material.
Everything else, plastics #3 through #7, drags the overall average down dramatically. This includes things like yogurt cups, foam takeout containers, plastic wrap, squeeze bottles, and rigid packaging. The EPA doesn’t break out individual recycling rates for these categories, but the math tells the story: if bottles are recycled at roughly 29 percent and the overall rate is 8.7 percent, the recycling rate for non-bottle plastics is extremely low, likely in the low single digits.
The recycling number stamped on a plastic item (the triangle with a number inside) indicates what resin it’s made from. It does not mean the item is recyclable in your area. Many consumers place these items in recycling bins assuming they’ll be processed, but most end up sorted out and sent to landfills anyway.
Why Plastic Recycling Rates Stay So Low
Several forces work against higher recycling rates, and they reinforce each other. The biggest one is economics. In the United States, virgin plastic is substantially cheaper than recycled plastic resin. When it costs manufacturers less to make new plastic from fossil fuels than to buy recycled material, demand for recycled content stays weak. Europe has reached rough price parity between virgin and recycled plastics, but the U.S. market hasn’t followed.
Infrastructure is another bottleneck. A 2025 survey by the Association of Plastic Recyclers identified over 85 post-consumer plastics reclaimers across the U.S. and Canada using mechanical and physical recycling technologies. These facilities collectively have the capacity to recycle an additional two billion pounds of plastic packaging per year beyond what they currently process. So some spare capacity exists, but it only handles certain types of clean, sorted plastic. The challenge is getting the right material to these facilities in a usable condition.
Contamination is the third problem. When non-recyclable plastics, food residue, or mixed materials enter the recycling stream, they can ruin entire batches. Sorting technology has improved, but the sheer variety of plastic packaging makes clean separation difficult and expensive.
The China Ban Changed Everything
For years, the U.S. dealt with much of its plastic waste by shipping it overseas, primarily to China, for processing. That changed dramatically when China implemented its National Sword policy in 2018, restricting imports of contaminated recyclables. U.S. plastic waste exports dropped from about 2.3 million tons in 2015 to 1.2 million tons in 2018, then down to roughly 600,000 tons by 2021.
This forced a reckoning. Much of what had been counted as “recycled” was really just exported, and a significant portion of those exports were burned or landfilled overseas. With fewer countries willing to accept American plastic waste, domestic recycling infrastructure has had to absorb more of the burden, and it wasn’t built for that volume. Some municipalities responded by narrowing the list of plastics they accept curbside, which is more honest but also means less material gets collected in the first place.
The Gap Between Goals and Reality
In 2020, the EPA announced its first-ever National Recycling Goal: reach a 50 percent overall recycling rate by 2030. That target covers all materials, not just plastics. But for context, the overall municipal solid waste recycling rate sat at about 32 percent in 2018, and plastics were by far the weakest category at 8.7 percent. Hitting 50 percent overall would require massive gains across every material type, and plastics would need to improve more than most.
For now, the practical reality for most Americans is straightforward. Your PET and HDPE bottles, the ones marked #1 and #2, have a reasonable chance of being recycled if you rinse them and place them in your curbside bin. Most other plastics, despite carrying a resin identification number, are unlikely to be recycled regardless of what you do with them. The gap between what feels recyclable and what actually gets recycled remains enormous.