Each year, beverage companies in the U.S. produce 100 billion plastic bottles, and the vast majority go unrecycled. In response, California recently passed a slew of laws that target plastic waste. One law — which the state is scheduled to start enforcing in January — requires beverage makers to use some recycled materials in single-use plastic bottles.
Proponents say the law expands the market for post-consumer plastics and shifts some of the responsibility for recycling plastic onto the companies that produce it. At the Burbank Recycle Center in Southern California, workers sort through a stream of mostly paper and plastic, all carried by conveyor belt from a giant pile beneath them to the platform where they stand.The pile reaches about 15 feet high and takes up much of the warehouse. Its contents were trucked there as part of California’s recycling program.
Recycling specialist Amy Hammes says they have to remove problematic, even dangerous, items like batteries and isolate things that hold value. “The biggest thing you will see is cardboard,” Hammes says. “And that’s really grown in the last decade because of online shopping.”