NERC Blog

Today's guest blog is authored by Steve Alexander, president and CEO of NERC Advisory Member the Association of Plastic Recyclers. The original post can be read here.

I recently read the report on plastics recycling rates by The Last Beach Cleanup and Beyond Plastics and, like many of you, it certainly was not good for my blood pressure. The pitiful white flag of surrender raised by the reports' authors certainly does not speak for the tens of thousands of Americans employed by our industry who, amidst a global pandemic, recycled nearly 5 billion pounds of plastic in 2020.

I received calls and emails from a number of APR members pointing out that the authors' disingenuous claim of low recycling numbers was achieved by parsing data, resulting in publishing an unfair and distorted assessment of our industry for the public.

Let's be clear: the debate about plastics recycling today is focused on containers consumers buy and use daily — soda bottles, milk jugs, yogurt tubs, etc. The authors…