Overall plastic bottle recycling rates declined in 1998 for the fourth consecutive year according to numbers released in June by the American Plastics Council. Although the PET soda bottle has the highest rate of any plastic bottle, only 1 out of 3 plastic soda bottles are recycled.

In 1996 CRI reported that a record number of PET soda bottles (741 million pounds) were landfilled in 1995. Three years later the volume of plastic soda bottles landfilled has grown to more than 1,000 million pounds — an increase of 40 percent. In contrast, the volume of PET soda bottles recycled has increased by only 13 percent.

We asked Peter Anderson, President of RecycleWorlds Consulting, to comment on the state of plastic bottle recycling. “One of the reasons we have this disturbing decline,” said Anderson, “is the sagging economics of recycling plastic bottles. Recyclers and packagers must work together to better design bottles for recycling and to use more bottles in making new bottles. We have to make plastics recycling economically attractive if we’re ever going to bring up the recovery rates.”

source: http://www.container-recycling.org/volume.html