Materials / Plastic bottles and jugs
Plastic bottles and jugs
#1 bottles were sold to a real buyer in 2023: 17 tons for $1,160. #2 jugs shipped nothing that year, probably stockpiled.
Where it goes
Solid border: confirmed. Dashed: likely. Dotted: open.
The numbers
- PET, 2023
- 17 tons, $1,160.25, about $68 per ton Town data
- HDPE, 2023
- 0 tons shipped, $0 Town data
- Everything else
- Plastics #3 through #7 aren't collected. Film has its own stream. Town data
- National context
- Under 10% of plastic gets recycled in the United States. Background
What the records show
The center takes #1 and #2 bottles and jugs and nothing else. That narrow list is the point. PET, the #1 resin in soda and water bottles, and HDPE, the #2 resin in milk jugs and detergent bottles, are chemically different, melt differently, and sell as separate commodities to different buyers. HDPE often splits again into natural, which is worth more, and colored.
In 2023 the town sold 17 tons of PET for $1,160.25. A real buyer paid real money. The buyer's name isn't on the town sheet, which is one of the things the state records request should surface.
HDPE shipped zero tons that year despite being collected. The likely explanation is stockpiling: baled material waits for a full load or a better price. That's a question for the center manager, and it's on the list.
The national picture is bleak and this site won't pretend otherwise. Under 10% of plastic gets recycled in the United States, and mixed #3 through #7 collection was always closer to fiction than recycling. Here, anything that isn't a bottle or a jug doesn't get recycled, with one exception: film, which has its own stream and its own page.
Still open
- Who bought the PET, and what they make from it.
- Why zero HDPE shipped in 2023.
Tracked on the open questions page.
Sources
- #2 2023 Recycled Materials/Revenue Breakdown (PDF). Town of Peterborough Town data
- #1 Recycling center page. Town of Peterborough Town data
- #4 Facility profile, facility 3184. NHDES OneStop State data