Interview: Practitioners on Recycling systems & material recovery — what they wish they knew earlier

Material recovery facility (MRF) operators, municipal recycling directors, and corporate procurement leaders face a shared challenge: the recycling system in the United States processes roughly 32% of municipal solid waste, according to the EPA's 2024 national recycling rate data, while aspirational targets often exceed 50%. The gap between intention and outcome stems from operational realities that rarely appear in vendor brochures or policy briefs. We spoke with five practitioners across the recycling value chain to surface the lessons they wish they had known from the start.

Why It Matters

The US recycling and material recovery industry generates approximately $120 billion in annual revenue and employs over 534,000 workers, according to the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries. Yet contamination rates at single-stream MRFs average 16-25%, commodity revenues remain volatile, and infrastructure investment has failed to keep pace with changing waste composition. The proportion of flexible plastics and multi-material packaging in the residential waste stream has increased by approximately 34% since 2018, according to The Recycling Partnership's 2025 State of Curbside Recycling report, while the equipment and sorting technology at many facilities was designed for a waste stream dominated by newspapers, aluminum cans, and rigid containers.

For procurement professionals, understanding these operational realities is essential. Extended producer responsibility (EPR) legislation has been enacted in California, Colorado, Oregon, and Minnesota, with active proposals in at least 12 additional states. These laws shift financial and operational responsibility for packaging end-of-life to producers, meaning that procurement decisions about packaging materials and design directly affect compliance costs and recycling outcomes. Corporate sustainability commitments, including those under the Ellen MacArthur Foundation's Global Commitment, require verified recycled content targets that depend on functional recovery infrastructure.

The Practitioners

Rachel Meidl, a fellow in energy and environment at Rice University's Baker Institute, previously served as a sustainability executive at a Fortune 50 retailer overseeing packaging strategy across 4,700 stores.

David Biderman, executive director and CEO of the Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA), has spent over two decades working on waste management policy and operations.

Keefe Harrison, CEO of The Recycling Partnership, has led the organization's efforts to transform curbside recycling systems across more than 1,800 communities.

Sarah Dearman, VP of circular ventures at The Recycling Partnership, previously led innovation at Closed Loop Partners' Center for the Circular Economy.

Tom Outerbridge, former general manager of Sims Municipal Recycling's operations in New York City, oversaw the processing of recyclables from 3.5 million residents.

Hard-Won Lessons

Contamination Is a System Design Problem, Not a Consumer Behavior Problem

Rachel Meidl described how years of public education campaigns about what goes in the recycling bin produced disappointingly modest results. "We spent millions on outreach telling people to recycle correctly, but contamination rates barely moved," she noted. "The breakthrough came when we started treating contamination as a system design issue. Cart size, collection frequency, labeling standards, and sorting technology matter far more than whether someone reads a flyer."

The data supports this framing. Communities that switched from 96-gallon to 64-gallon recycling carts saw contamination rates drop by 10-15 percentage points, according to research by the Solid Waste Association of North America. The smaller container forces residents to be more selective. Similarly, facilities that invested in optical sorters and AI-powered robotic sorting arms reduced outbound contamination to below 5%, regardless of inbound quality. Republic Services reported that its AI-driven sorting installations across 15 MRFs improved material purity by 25-30% compared to manual-only sorting lines.

End Markets Must Exist Before Infrastructure Gets Built

David Biderman emphasized a lesson that seems obvious in retrospect but is routinely ignored. "I have seen too many communities invest $20-40 million in state-of-the-art MRFs without securing commitments from buyers for the sorted materials," he said. "If there is no domestic buyer for mixed plastics #3-7 at a price that covers processing costs, building the capacity to sort those materials is a financial risk."

China's National Sword policy in 2018, which restricted imports of recyclable materials, exposed this vulnerability dramatically. US recycling programs that had depended on export markets for low-grade materials saw commodity revenues collapse by 40-60% overnight. Communities in the Midwest and Southeast were particularly affected, with some temporarily landfilling materials they had previously exported. The lesson, according to Biderman, is that sustainable recycling requires committed domestic end markets, ideally with long-term offtake agreements, before capital investment decisions are made.

The Economics of Recycling Are Hyperlocal

Tom Outerbridge managed one of the most complex urban MRFs in the country, processing material from New York City's curbside program. His central lesson was that recycling economics cannot be generalized. "What works in Portland does not work in Houston, and what works in Houston does not work in New York," he observed. "Tipping fees, labor costs, transportation distances, waste composition, and local commodity markets create entirely different economic equations."

In the Northeast, where landfill tipping fees exceed $90 per ton and labor costs are high, automated MRFs with lower per-ton processing costs are economically viable despite their $30-50 million capital requirements. In regions where landfill tipping fees remain below $40 per ton, the economic case for recycling infrastructure investment is far weaker. Outerbridge stressed that procurement professionals evaluating packaging recyclability must consider where their products actually end up, not just whether the material is technically recyclable.

Producer Responsibility Changes Everything, But Slowly

Keefe Harrison has worked directly with the states implementing EPR for packaging. Her assessment is that EPR fundamentally reshapes recycling economics, but the transition is slower and more complex than advocates anticipated. "California's SB 54 is the most ambitious EPR law in the country, requiring 65% source reduction, recycling, or composting of single-use packaging by 2032," she explained. "But standing up a producer responsibility organization, establishing fee structures, and building the necessary infrastructure will take five to seven years, not two to three."

Colorado's EPR program, enacted in 2022, provides a useful benchmark. The state's producer responsibility organization began collecting fees from obligated producers in 2025, but the revenue is not expected to fund significant new recycling infrastructure until 2027 at the earliest. Harrison advised procurement teams to begin planning for EPR compliance now, even in states without current legislation, because material choices and packaging design decisions made today will determine compliance costs for the next decade.

Data and Measurement Are Woefully Inadequate

Sarah Dearman highlighted a systemic problem that undermines nearly every recycling improvement effort. "We do not have reliable, standardized data on what actually happens to materials after they leave a MRF," she said. "MRFs track inbound tonnage and outbound commodity shipments, but very few track actual recovery rates by material type, and almost none have visibility into whether sorted materials are actually recycled into new products."

The Recycling Partnership's 2025 analysis found that only 23% of US MRFs track material-specific recovery rates, and fewer than 10% conduct regular composition audits of their residue streams. Without this data, it is impossible to make evidence-based decisions about which materials are worth collecting, what equipment investments will improve outcomes, or whether recycling rates are actually improving. Dearman recommended that procurement professionals demand material-specific recovery data from their recycling partners and support industry efforts to standardize measurement methodologies.

Common Pitfalls

Chasing Headline Recycling Rates

Multiple practitioners warned against optimizing for top-line recycling rates at the expense of material quality. Contaminated bales may count toward a municipality's reported recycling rate, but if the receiving facility rejects or landfills those bales, no actual recycling has occurred. A 2024 analysis by the National Waste and Recycling Association found that approximately 15% of material shipped from US MRFs as "recycled" was ultimately rejected by end markets and diverted to landfill or incineration. Quality-focused metrics, such as outbound contamination rates and end-market acceptance rates, provide more meaningful indicators of system performance.

Underestimating Operational Costs

Capital costs for a modern single-stream MRF range from $25-75 million depending on capacity and technology level, but operating costs frequently surprise facility owners. Labor, maintenance, and equipment replacement typically account for $50-80 per ton processed, and these costs escalate as waste composition becomes more complex. Optical sorter lenses degrade and require replacement every 18-24 months at $50,000-100,000 per unit. Robotic sorting arms, while reducing labor costs, introduce maintenance requirements that many facilities are not staffed to handle. Several practitioners emphasized that total cost of ownership analysis, not just capital budgets, should drive investment decisions.

Ignoring the Informal Economy

In many US cities, informal waste pickers and scrap collectors divert significant volumes of high-value materials (aluminum, copper, cardboard) before they reach curbside collection. While rarely acknowledged in official recycling statistics, this activity affects MRF economics by reducing the proportion of high-value materials in the incoming stream. Practitioners working in large metropolitan areas noted that formal recycling systems would benefit from integrating rather than competing with informal collectors, as several Latin American and Asian cities have demonstrated through cooperative models.

What Practitioners Would Do Differently

When asked what they would change if starting over, the responses converged on several themes. First, every practitioner emphasized investing in data systems before investing in physical infrastructure. Understanding waste composition, contamination sources, and end-market dynamics through rigorous measurement enables far better capital allocation decisions.

Second, practitioners recommended building relationships with end-market buyers before designing collection programs. "Design your collection system around what end markets will actually accept, not around what you think residents want to recycle," Outerbridge advised.

Third, several practitioners stressed the importance of designing for the worst-case scenario. Commodity markets for recycled materials are cyclical, and any recycling program that depends on high commodity prices to break even will eventually face financial distress. Programs should be designed to remain financially viable when commodity revenues are at their 10-year low.

Action Checklist

• Audit your packaging portfolio against material-specific recovery rates in your primary markets, not national averages
• Engage MRF operators directly to understand actual contamination and rejection rates for your packaging materials
• Map current and pending EPR legislation in states where your products are sold and model future compliance costs
• Require material-specific recovery data and end-market verification from recycling service providers
• Evaluate packaging design changes that reduce contamination risk, such as eliminating multi-material components and problematic adhesives
• Establish long-term offtake agreements for post-consumer recycled content to secure supply and support end-market development
• Join pre-competitive industry initiatives like The Recycling Partnership's Film and Flexibles Coalition or the US Plastics Pact
• Build contingency plans for commodity price volatility into recycling program budgets

FAQ

Q: What recycled content targets are realistic for procurement teams to set? A: Targets depend heavily on material type. Post-consumer recycled content for PET bottles can realistically reach 25-50% with current supply, and several major beverage companies have achieved 30% or higher. HDPE containers can incorporate 25-40% recycled content. Recycled content for flexible packaging remains below 5% due to technical and supply constraints. Set material-specific targets based on actual market availability rather than aspirational goals.

Q: How should procurement teams evaluate whether a packaging material is "recyclable"? A: Look beyond technical recyclability (whether the material can be recycled) to practical recyclability (whether it actually is recycled at scale). The Association of Plastic Recyclers' Design Guide and How2Recycle labeling standards provide useful frameworks. Materials collected by fewer than 60% of US curbside programs or with end-market recovery rates below 30% should not be marketed as recyclable, regardless of technical capability.

Q: What is the biggest misconception about the US recycling system? A: That it is a unified system. The US has approximately 9,800 curbside recycling programs with different accepted materials, collection methods, and processing infrastructure. A material that is effectively recycled in Seattle may be landfilled in Atlanta. Procurement decisions must account for this geographic variation rather than assuming national recyclability.

Sources

• US Environmental Protection Agency. (2024). National Recycling Rate Assessment: 2023 Data Update. Washington, DC: EPA Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery.
• The Recycling Partnership. (2025). State of Curbside Recycling Report. Falls Church, VA: The Recycling Partnership.
• Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries. (2025). The Scrap Recycling Industry: By the Numbers. Washington, DC: ISRI.
• Solid Waste Association of North America. (2024). Cart Size and Contamination: A Multi-City Analysis. Silver Spring, MD: SWANA.
• National Waste and Recycling Association. (2024). Material Rejection Rates at US MRFs: An Industry Survey. Arlington, VA: NWRA.
• Republic Services. (2025). AI and Robotics in Material Recovery: Performance Data from 15 Facility Deployments. Phoenix, AZ: Republic Services.
• Ellen MacArthur Foundation. (2025). Global Commitment Progress Report 2024. Cowes, UK: EMF.