What do an empty mayo bottle, a lithium-ion battery and the plastic bag your takeout came in all have in common? Not much. But chances are, they’ll land in a recycling bin instead of the trashcan. Recycling in the U.S. is a mashup of varying rules that depend on where you live, and it’s been further complicated by China’s restrictions on importation of our recyclables — not to mention, a global pandemic.
“The China issue really opened our eyes to the fact that we need to recycle right, in order to reduce contamination in the recycling stream,” says David Keeling, president of the National Recycling Coalition, a nonprofit that promotes recycling in the U.S.
According to the EPA, in 2017 — before the restrictions from China — our overall recycling rate was 35.2 percent. In 2020, according to a report by the Recycling Partnership, just over half of Americans have ...
