OPINION: Just one word on America Recycles Day: Plastics

Nearly 3 million jobs. $1.1 trillion in output. $17.5 billion in capital expenditures.

Just one word: plastics.

Two new reports demonstrate the importance of American plastics to the success of overall U.S. manufacturing and economic growth. And a third report foreshadows the next chapter in plastics manufacturing: recycling.

A September report (Economic Contributions of Plastics Manufacturing to the U.S. Economy) found that direct, indirect and payroll-induced jobs from U.S. plastics manufacturing add up to nearly 3 million jobs. And the industry’s overall combined output adds up to $1.1 trillion.

Additionally, an earlier analysis (Plastics in American Manufacturing) found that critical U.S. manufacturing industries — from automotive and aerospace to health care and electronics — are reliant on plastics and need a robust and reliable supply to innovate and succeed. America’s plastics makers’ most important role is enabling innovation in industries that make things all Americans rely on: our cars, homes, medical equipment, electronics — even our food and water supply.

One of the reasons for U.S. plastics manufacturing success: America’s access to plentiful domestic natural gas. The basic chemical building blocks used to manufacture plastics can be derived from crude oil or natural gas. Many other countries rely heavily on crude oil. Our vast domestic natural gas resources create a competitive advantage for America’s plastics manufacturers.

This natural energy advantage is one of the reasons our industry invests so heavily in new facilities and equipment across U.S. communities — $17.5 billion in 2024, an increase of 50% over a decade. Abundant, affordable natural gas helps keep our innovative capacity alive here in America, rather than outsourcing our innovation overseas.

How can we build on that advantage? That’s what the third report tells us. A recent analysis (The Economic Impact of Plastics Recycling) found that if just 50% of plastics in the municipal solid waste stream were redirected from landfills to recycling facilities, the U.S. could gain an estimated 173,200 jobs, nearly $13 billion in annual payroll and nearly $50 billion in additional annual economic output.

To put that in perspective, $50 billion is about the same as the annual economic impact of the milk industry. In other words, boosting plastics recycling would bring significant new economic benefits.

To help realize those benefits, our industry is pivoting toward innovations in plastics recycling.

Simply put, America’s plastic makers want to manufacture as much new plastics out of used plastics as feasible. Recycling more plastics will conserve resources and reduce plastics in landfills. It will create new jobs. It will strengthen supply chains. And it will make U.S. manufacturing more competitive over the long-term.

Here’s why. Multiple industries and global competitors are requiring products made with recycled plastics. One example: Japan and the European Union have mandated use of recycled plastics in autos starting in just a few years. To sell cars or car parts in those countries, American manufacturers will need to comply.

So, they will need lots of high-quality recycled plastics.

To meet that demand in autos and other critical industries, the U.S. must modernize and expand our capacity to collect and recycle more plastics. And we must enact policies that incentivize continued innovation and investment in recycling.

So, we’ve asked Congress to pass legislation that would transform our outdated recycling systems through simple steps, such as creating national recycling standards, targets for recycled content and a modern regulatory system to develop a circular economy for plastics.

These policies would help unleash burgeoning innovations in recycling technologies that can dramatically increase the types and amounts of plastics that we can recycle. Innovative recycling technologies can deliver the high-quality recycled plastics required by automakers and other manufacturers. But many of these technologies are shackled by outdated and confusing regulations, so we’re asking Congress and the administration for smart policies to unlock these innovative technologies.

America’s plastics manufacturing industry is quite new. But it has come a long way since World War II when our chemists and engineers helped replace scarce rubber with plastics for the war effort. Today our industry supports millions of jobs and more than a trillion dollars in output. It’s a modern American manufacturing success story whose best chapters have yet to be written.

The next chapter ... Just two words: plastics recycling.

We want America to be the best place in the world to manufacture plastics... and the best place to recycle plastics.