WNY recycling plant processing as much plastic as possible

BUFFALO, N.Y. — How much of your plastic gets recycled?

A report by the activist group Greenpeace says U.S. households generated 51 million tons of plastic waste in 2021. Only 2.4 million tons of that was recycled. The report also found two common plastics — PET 1 and HDPE 2 — typically bottles and jugs — are only reprocessed at rates of 20.9% and 10.3%, respectively.

Now the group is calling on people to turn away from plastics entirely.

In the meantime, places like Buffalo Recycling Enterprises are doing their best to hand-sort, bale and ship plastic off to mills.

Operations Manager Fenna Mandolang knows it's harder when things that can't be recycled end up there.

"We do sometimes have 25 upward to 30% contamination in the recycling," she said.

Most of that is complete trash. But some of it is "wish-cycling."

"It may go all the way through the sorting process and then it has to be shipped one more time to pay for the gas and the time of the driver, all the way back to the landfill," Mandolang said.

That's why education is key for Susan Attridge, Buffalo's director of recycling.

"Plastics are becoming more and more complicated as the switches really occur for the single-use plastics that people can't use again and the markets are not coming into place to help recycle them," Attridge said.

So just because that recycling triangle is on something, doesn't mean it's good to go.

"A milk container, juice, those cardboard [items] with the plastic outside. I really want to recycle those, and I used to be able to recycle them, but I can't now," said Attridge. "So it's really frustrating for me to take something that I used to be able to recycle and put it in the garbage. But I do because I honor and respect for recycling system."

That means not trying to recycle things like plastic bags, which can clog up machines.

"Turn it over if there's a one, a two or a five on it, and it's a takeout container, you can put that in your green tote," Attridge said. "Otherwise, it goes in the garbage."

It's a little bit of extra effort That goes a long way.

"Everything that is happening here also happens across the state and across the country," Mandolang said. "And it adds up, right?"

People have to keep in mind that this is the end of the line.

"There's reduce first and then reuse and recycle is the third," said Mandolang. "And that's what we're doing here is contributing to the recycling end. But there are those first two Rs to consider."

That means we can all do something.

"That old adage that every person makes a difference — you can see it here at the recycling plant," said Mandolang.