U.S. Waste Management Levels Up: First Installment of the 2026 State of Recycling Report Released

The Recycling Partnership released the first installment of its 2026 State of Recycling Report in Washington, marking a milestone in U.S. residential recycling data. Moving away from a traditional single-volume release, the organization will continuously deliver strategic data and insights throughout the coming year to best support the rapidly evolving regulatory landscape. The report highlights that voluntary commitments alone are no longer sufficient, and today, 1 in 5 Americans lives under some form of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) packaging law.

The Five Pillars of System Success

The publication titled “Part One: Setting the Stage | Observations of the U.S. Residential Recycling System” establishes a baseline for U.S. residential recycling. The document is built upon The Partnership’s National Recycling Database, which tracks and analyzes live data from more than 9,000 community recycling programs across the country.

The report establishes a shared understanding and outlines five deeply interdependent requirements that must advance together for the system to succeed:

1. Packaging: 100% of packaging needs to be recyclable.

2. Access: 100% of households need access to recycling from their home.

3. Engagement: Residents need to fully engage in the process, with 90% of households confidently placing 80% of accepted recyclables into collection.

4. Processing: Recycling facilities need to effectively process 95% of the material.

5. End markets: Recycling facilities need sufficient end markets for secondary raw materials.

The Limits of Voluntary Action and Shared Responsibility

Keefe Harrison, CEO and Founder of The Recycling Partnership, highlighted regarding the report: “Strengthening our recycling system takes more than one breakthrough, one policy, or one actor stepping up.” The CEO pointed out the hard truth acknowledged in the first installment of the 2026 report: voluntary commitments alone cannot deliver system-level change. Success requires shared responsibility and consistent investment across all five prerequisites of the system. According to Harrison, public trust can only be rebuilt if meaningful and coordinated progress is made in these areas, and people see in practice that what they put in the recycling bin actually becomes new products.

Growing Gap and EPR Packaging Regulations

The report also highlights a growing gap between the material placed on the market and the volume the system can successfully recycle. Early data suggest that the composition of the residential recycling stream continues to shift: certain material categories show significant growth, while the volume of others declines. Detailed generation data will be presented in the second installment of the report, set to be released in late summer.

These system gaps are increasingly being addressed by state-level legislation. Today, 1 in 5 Americans lives in states with Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws for packaging. According to The Partnership’s research, these laws enjoy strong bipartisan support in the United States: more than 60% of Republicans and more than 70% of Democrats strongly or somewhat favor this policy.

At the same time, the report asserts that progress will take time, as domestic recycling infrastructure is no longer just an “environmental nice-to-have,” but an essential, necessary strategy to protect domestic manufacturing and keep the U.S. economy competitive.

The Recycling Partnership’s Achievements to Date

Founded in 2014, The Recycling Partnership is a U.S. nonprofit solving the toughest challenges of recycling by tackling problems no single company, community, or policymaker can fix alone. Since their inception, they have achieved the following quantitative results:

• Recovered more than 2 billion pounds of new recyclables.

• Avoided 2.6 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions.

• Delivered more than 2 million recycling carts to U.S. homes.

• Catalyzed $658 million in recycling system and infrastructure improvements.

References and Sources:

• Official page of the original report: https://recyclingpartnership.org/residential-recycling-report/

• Related state (EPR) resource: The relevant official page of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the California state waste management authority (CalRecycle) on Extended Producer Responsibility: https://calrecycle.ca.gov/epr/