Images of straws stuck in sea turtles and floating garbage islands have put plastic waste in the spotlight. But even as consumers express outrage, plastic bottle recycling fell last year, according to a new industry study.

A joint report by the trade groups American Chemistry Council and Association of Plastic Recyclers estimated that plastic bottle recycling decreased 3.6 percent last year, dipping to 2.8 billion pounds in 2017. The decrease is partially due to containers becoming lighter weight, but also because the rate of bottle recycling hasn’t grown significantly in recent years.

In “an exceedingly difficult year for plastic bottle recycling,” the report said, about 29.3 percent of plastic bottles were recycled in 2017, down about a half percentage point from a year earlier. Over the past five years, the rate of plastic bottle recycling has remained essentially flat.

“Americans are continuing to recycle and recycling behavior continues to grow, however there is also more material continuing to go into waste stream and plastics are growing,” said Steve Russell, vice president of the plastics division of American Chemistry Council, which represents chemical and plastic makers.

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The American Chemistry Council’s members account for 80 percent of all plastic resin produced in the United States — the tiny plastic pellets that go into a host of consumer goods and are made by companies such as Houston’s LyondellBasell and Chevron Phillips Chemical.

The explosion in plastic waste and the increasing focus on it by environmentalists, regulators and policy makers is posing a threat to chemical companies and an energy industry that often points to plastics — and the petrochemicals behind them — as key to supporting future demand for oil in the face of flattening demand for gasoline. Houston is one the biggest petrochemical hubs in the country, accounting for about 42 percent of the nation's petrochemical manufacturing capacity, according to the Greater Partnership of Houston.

Increasingly, the petrochemical industry sees recycling as a major part of the solution to mounting plastic waste and the damage it could do its business if governments respond by imposing restrictions on plastics or consumers seek alternatives to plastics. Local petrochemical makers have invested heavily into the recycling industry.

In March, LyondellBasell and the French waste management firm Suez launched a joint venture recycling company in the Netherlands. In November, The Woodlands’ Americas Styrenics announced a joint venture with Oregon-based Agilyx to run a recycling facility in Portland-area suburb.

Expect to see petrochemical companies continuing to grow their investment in recycling. Along with its Canadian counterpart, the American Chemistry Council and its members have pledged to recycle or recover all plastic packaging by 2040. Consumer products companies such as Coca Cola, Unilever, Pepsi and Proctor and Gamble have all pledged to significantly boost their use of recycled plastic in the coming decades, indicating demand for recycled material will rise, Russell said.

“What’s really happening is that there is going to be a fundamental transformation of the plastics business in the coming two dozen or so years where a significant amount of plastics is going to be sourced from waste,” Russell said.

At the same time, the plastic recycling industry is facing headwinds. The United States, for example, traditionally has exported much of its plastic waste to other countries, particularly China. Exports of post-consumer plastic bottle waste fell in 2017 and that drop is likely to continue due to China’s ban on several types of plastic waste imports that went into effect earlier this year.

On HoustonChronicle.com: Rice University report: 'One-off' fixes for plastic waste aren't helpful

Rachel Meidl, fellow in energy and environment at the Baker Institute at Rice University, wrote China’s refusal to import plastic waste will “upend recycling economics, disrupt the global supply chain and further exacerbate the need to globally manage plastics.”

The Chinese ban will force governments, businesses and individuals to find new solutions to the plastic waste problem, Meidl said. And while recycling will be a big piece of that, there likely is “no single, one-size-fits-all solution to the plastics issue," Meidl said.

marissa.luck@chron.com

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