Climate Corner Op-Ed: The Truth about Plastic Recycling
City of Piedmont Climate Fellow Andrew Kaplowitz shines a light on what happens to your plastic recyclables after the blue bin
Published June 27, 2025
Ever wonder what happens to plastic after you put it in your blue recycling bin? The answer is more interesting than you might think.
Piedmont’s recycling is sorted at Republic Services’ West County Resource Recovery Facility (WCRR) in Richmond. From there, plastics are bundled by type and sent out to be sold. The markets that accept different types of plastics constantly fluctuate.
The types of plastic in highest demand are Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) – used for water bottles, soda bottles, and food containers – and High-Density Polyethylene (HDPE), commonly used for shampoo bottles, laundry detergent, and household cleaners. Republic Services uses AI-powered arms to seamlessly identify PET plastic at its sorting facility, pulling out and bundling the most valuable plastics for shipment while ejecting other materials to avoid cross-contamination. These robots are currently being trained to collect HDPE plastics as well.
For other types of plastic – often found in single use plastic bags, clamshells, packaging foam, and disposable drinking cups – recycling markets are more fluid. Even after placing these in a blue bin, likelihood of reprocessing may be slim and there’s a good chance they will find their way to a landfill. You can avoid the stress of wondering where these materials will end up by looking for ways to forgo them altogether.
We call this strategy “stop or swap.”
To “stop” is the act of eliminating a plastic good or material from your daily routine, opting for reusables instead. These can include stainless steel water bottles, tote bags, and reusable food containers.
Where reusables aren’t an option, like when you’re buying milk at the grocery store, try to “swap.” Swap is the act of choosing plastics that have a stronger recycling market. For example, rather than purchasing milk in a carton, try to buy milk that comes in a glass bottle or #1 (PET) plastic jug.
I want to close by reiterating that despite market fluidity, it is essential that as a community, we preserve our practices of placing plastic goods in the blue bin. However, that isn’t to say we can’t implement change in our spending habits. Through the installation of stop and swap strategies, Piedmont can lower its environmental footprint by reducing the quantity of plastic that ends up in our landfills. If you are still unsure about how to dispose of waste and recyclables, StopWaste provides a tool called RE:Source, which is a search engine that allows you to input any type of item and see how to it gets sorted in your community.