Study: 60% of US population has kerbside recycling bin

United States – Kerbside collection programmes for recycling are available to 73% of the US population, with 53% enjoying automatic provision of this service whereas the other 20% has a type of subscription or opt-in recycling programme available to them. For 21% of the population, meanwhile, drop-off recycling programmes are the only ones available.

These are among the headline findings of the newly-released ‘2015-16 Centralized Study on Availability of Recycling’, which was commissioned by the Sustainable Packaging Coalition.

Taking into account estimates of the proportion of the US population that elects to participate in subscription or opt-in kerbside recycling programmes, it has been calculated that some 60% of Americans have a kerbside recycling receptacle. It was also found that almost 90% of residents with a single-family kerbside recycling programme now have single-stream collection.

The study’s findings on the acceptance of 49 types of packaging in recycling programmes are said to provide ‘important substantiation data for industry to make recyclability claims in compliance with the US Federal Trade Commission’s guidance for environmental marketing claims’.