Best Practices and Industry Standards
in PET Plastic Recycling
BEST PRACTICES IN PET COLLECTION
Drop-Off Recycling
Issue: When implementing drop-off recycling collection centers for community residents to bring their designated recyclables, there are a number of best practice design elements that can improve the quality and quantity of materials collected and reduce recycling collection costs.
Best Practices: The best practices to be employed in establishing drop-off collection locations for PET plastics are:
• drop- off recycling collection sites should be located at the front end of waste disposal locations or facilities
• drop-off centers should be staffed (paid or volunteer)
• drop-off centers should be equipped with some type of compaction or densification device
• drop-off centers should have educational displays to assist residents in proper material separation and general recycling information
Drop-off recycling collection centers are preferably sited in conjunction with a location where community residents can also dispose of non-recyclable or non-compostable household trash, such as at solid waste landfills or transfer stations. This increases the convenience for community residents to participate in the drop-off collection program. It also reinforces the habit of recycling before and rather than disposal. Educational displays at drop-off centers can also increase residents’ awareness of the range of materials they can recycle.
There are two basic types of drop-off recycling sites. The first are self-serve drop-off programs, where there is no staff at the collection site to monitor collections. The second are sites that are only open when a staff is present. Increasingly, staffed sites are considered the best practice. Staffed sites can greatly reduce material contamination and increase material value, decrease the financial costs associated with vandalism at unattended sites, provide minimal densification processing to increase collection efficiencies and transportation economics, and provide “one-on-one” community education on recycling. Combined, these benefits can improve program economics beyond the cost of funding staff. In addition, many drop-off centers around the country have successfully used volunteers from their communities to staff
drop-off centers, when funds for paid staff were not available. Many of the early recycling drop-off centers established in the 1970s were operated in this fashion.
There are many types of collection containers used at drop-off recycling centers. Regardless of the type of container used, proper signage is the best practice in ensuring that only the designated recyclable materials are deposited into them. The signage should use understandable language(s), in clear graphics that illustrate the acceptable recyclable material or materials to be placed into collection containers. Signage for PET plastic bottles and containers should include examples of acceptable and unacceptable containers.
The final best practice to follow at drop-off collection centers used to collect post-consumer PET bottles and containers is to provide on-site compaction or densification. Compacting PET plastic bottles greatly increases the quantity of materials that can be picked up and transported to a processing facility. In addition, on-site densification means that collection containers can be emptied and processed on site and stored for collection at a later time rather than having to arrange for a collection each time a container is full. Therefore, compacting materials greatly reduces the frequency of collections (which means less truck activity) and the cost of transportation Finally, compacted materials provide the greatest market flexibility for your collected PET plastic bottles and containers.