Every year, almost two billion pounds of PET gets recycled, and while two billion is a big number, it’s not nearly big enough. Despite being a recycling success story relative to other types of plastic packaging, less than 30% of PET bottles are recycled, the supply of rPET is vastly insufficient compared to the sky-high demand from the packaging community, and just over half of the US population’s recycling programs accept PET non-bottle rigids like trays, cups, and clamshells. Yet, PET recycling is neither broken nor stagnant. Promising new trends like thermoform-to-thermoform recycling, depolymerization, and secondary sortation facilities are generating new opportunities for change, and new investments are capitalizing on those opportunities to bring about a new paradigm of PET recycling. Learn how these opportunities can be leveraged to increase PET capture, unlock new sources of rPET, improve recyclability claims, align rPET supply with demand, and enhance the overall circularity of the largest stream of plastic packaging.

Adam will also introduce Plastic IQ which translates cutting-edge research into personalized, data-based action plans and recognizes companies that set impactful targets to address plastic waste and realize their circularity and corporate sustainability goals.