Polypropylene Cups Earn Widely Recyclable Designation, Expanding Access to Curbside Recycling Nationwide

Business

Polypropylene Cups Earn Widely Recyclable Designation, Expanding Access to Curbside Recycling Nationwide

2026-02-02 20:00 Last Updated At：02-03 12:16

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb 2, 2026--

More communities across the U.S. can now recycle cold to‑go cups, marking a major step toward reducing waste and building a more circular future. Thanks to the leadership of How2Recycle®, NextGen Consortium managed by Closed Loop Partners’ Center for the Circular Economy, The Recycling Partnership, Starbucks and WM, to‑go cups are entering a new era of recyclability.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260202061056/en/

Polypropylene beverage cups, commonly used for cold drinks, have earned the Widely Recyclable designation from How2Recycle®, North America’s most recognized on-pack disposal label. This milestone means more than 60% of U.S. households can recycle these cups through curbside programs or drop-off programs, helping reduce waste and improve recycling rates nationwide.

In the last four months, the collective effort across these organizations has helped add cold cup access to more than 2 million new households. Access has grown steadily increasing more than 10% over the last several years, reflecting an unprecedented level of collaboration across the industry.

This milestone reflects the combined efforts of partners across the value chain:

Together, these organizations are aligning design, infrastructure and consumer education and remain committed to improving recycling rates nationwide.

“Expanding access, improving infrastructure and strengthening consumer communications takes collaboration across the value chain,” said Paul Nowak, executive director of GreenBlue, the nonprofit behind the How2Recycle® program. “No single organization can do this alone. The work we’re doing today has benefits beyond any single material. By investing in infrastructure and consumer-tested communications, we’re driving industry and behavior change at scale.”

The Recycling Partnership’s State of Recycling Report shows households generate about as much polypropylene as high-density polyethylene, which is used in detergent, milk and shampoo bottles, yet polypropylene’s recycling rate is only one-third that of HDPE. Closing this gap is critical for a more sustainable future.

Every cup recycled means less plastic in landfills and waterways. Increasing acceptance and recovery reduces contamination, improves material quality and lowers demand for virgin resources. These efforts support global goals to cut waste and curb pollution.

“Achieving the Widely Recyclable designation for polypropylene cups is a significant milestone,” said Marika McCauley Sine, chief sustainability officer at Starbucks. “It reflects what’s possible when businesses, recyclers and communities work together to create solutions that can reduce waste and make recycling easier for customers who opt for to-go beverages. We’re committed to continuing our collective effort to build a circular system that can benefit people and the planet.”

While this milestone reflects meaningful progress, more work lies ahead to expand access for even more consumers across the U.S. Ongoing engagement will help residents include these items in their recyclables and strengthen the system for the future. Reaching 60% access is a big step forward but not the finish line.

Increasing cup recycling is complex and requires collaboration across the value chain, including continued leadership from organizations like the Foodservice Packaging Institute, which supports communities and recyclers in improving acceptance of foodservice packaging. Manufacturers and retail or food service businesses can improve cup design for recycling and commit to using more recycled content to build strong, sustainable end markets. Communities need support to update guidelines and provide consistent education to residents to help boost capture. Effective recycling policies also help the system function more smoothly. These pieces take time but together they will help move toward a system where every cup can be recycled, and actually is.

Additional Partner Quotes:

Closed Loop Partners

“This recycling designation change for polypropylene cups marks an important step forward for the circularity of foodservice packaging in the U.S. The Closed Loop Center for the Circular Economy, through our NextGen Consortium, is proud to be a part of this work and to celebrate this milestone alongside key industry leaders,” said Kate Daly, CEO of Closed Loop Partners’ Center for the Circular Economy. “Contributing to this work to make polypropylene cups widely recyclable is part of our broader work to accelerate the recovery, reuse and recycling of foodservice packaging. We look forward to continuing to expand recycling access for more packaging and materials –– a critical part of building a circular economy.”

KW Plastics

“KW Plastics is the world’s largest plastics recycler,” said Stephanie Baker, KM, Director of Advocacy & Marketing. “We provide a dependable domestic home for post-consumer polypropylene. We recycle this material every day in the United States and we see consistent demand from manufacturers who rely on high-quality recycled resin to make new products. Polypropylene has real value. It supports American manufacturing and plays a vital role in building a stronger, more resilient circular economy.”

“We have watched demand for post-consumer polypropylene grow steadily over the last decade as more companies shifted toward lighter and more efficient packaging,” said Stephanie Baker, KM, Director of Advocacy & Marketing. “That change increased the amount of polypropylene on store shelves and in recycling streams. It also created the need for strong domestic markets to keep this material from being exported at low value. By setting clear purchasing specifications and investing in the ability to recycle polypropylene at scale, we helped build a pathway that keeps this material in the United States where it can be reprocessed into something new.”

The Recycling Partnership

“This is meaningful progress for polypropylene recycling,” said Kate Davenport, Chief Impact Officer at The Recycling Partnership. “With 75.5 million households now able to recycle PPM cups, we’ve reached the threshold for on-pack labeling — a critical tool for building consumer understanding. It’s a first step worth commending. But access alone is not enough. Only 20 percent of PPM packaging is currently captured, and 76 percent of all recyclables are still lost at the household level. That’s why our focus remains on what it takes to move the system forward: clear communication, stronger engagement, and continued investment in communities. Backed by national recycling system data and close relationships with local recycling programs, we see both the gains and the gaps. The Partnership is committed to closing them.”

WM

“Plastic to‑go cups becoming recyclable curbside is a major milestone made possible by years of investment, innovation and collaboration,” said Tara Hemmer, chief sustainability officer, WM. “As the largest recycler in North America, we’re proud to help capture and recycle more of the everyday materials people rely on, and this achievement proves what’s possible when communities, companies and industry leaders come together to make recycling more accessible.”

About Closed Loop Partners’ Center for the Circular Economy

The Closed Loop Center for the Circular Economy is an innovation firm that helps global brands, retailers and manufacturers solve their most pressing material challenges. We’re built on the principle that a world without waste is not only an environmental necessity, it’s a path to profitable growth. The Closed Loop Center works across four focus areas: material innovation, reuse systems, recycling improvement and policy readiness. We are part of Closed Loop Partners, which also includes one of the largest privately held recycling companies in the U.S. and a leading global circular economy capital management group. Learn more at https://www.closedlooppartners.com/the-center/.

About GreenBlue

GreenBlue is an environmental nonprofit on a mission to accelerate the transition to a regenerative, just, and sustainable materials economy. GreenBlue is the parent nonprofit of projects, including the Sustainable Packaging Coalition, How2Recycle, and the Recycled Material Standard. Through these projects and their hundreds of members, GreenBlue strives to be the most reliable and accurate source of truth compelling the packaging value chain to construct environmentally regenerative, socially responsible systems. Learn more at https://greenblue.org/.

About How2Recycle

How2Recycle is the leading labeling program for packaging disposal instructions with the most recognizable on-pack label across the United States and Canada. Launched in 2012, How2Recycle started as a Sustainable Packaging Coalition working group aimed at providing consumers with clear, standard, and accessible on-pack disposal instructions. Today, with its more than 800 participating organizations, How2Recycle and its members are on a mission to make sure that consumers have the information they need to get waste into the right streams. Learn more at https://greenblue.org/projects/how2recycle/.

About The Recycling Partnership

The Recycling Partnership is a purpose-driven organization committed to building a better recycling system, one that delivers the economic and environmental benefits our communities and the hundreds of thousands of people who work throughout the recycling industry deserve. The Recycling Partnership’s team of experts, practitioners, and thought leaders with real-world experience works with its partners to create meaningful change across the recycling system and assist communities, companies, and policymakers in enacting such change. The Recycling Partnership uses its one-of-its kind National Recycling Database that reaches more than 9,000 U.S. recycling programs and develops practical and innovative resources to address critical gaps in the recycling system. Learn more at recyclingpartnership.org.

About Starbucks

Since 1971, Starbucks Coffee Company has been committed to responsibly souring and roasting high-quality Arabic coffee. Today, with a global footprint of more than 40,000 company-operated and licensed coffeehouse and a growing presence in consumer-packaged goods, we are the world’s premier purveyor of specialty coffee. Through our unwavering commitment to excellence and our guiding principles, we bring the unique Starbucks Experience to life for every customer through every cup. To share in the experience, please visit us in our stores or online at about.starbucks.com or starbucks.com.

About WM

WM (WM.com) is North America's leading provider of comprehensive environmental solutions. Previously known as Waste Management and based in Houston, Texas, WM is driven by commitments to put people first and achieve success with integrity. The company, through its subsidiaries, provides collection, recycling and disposal services to millions of residential, commercial, industrial, medical and municipal customers throughout the U.S. and Canada. With innovative infrastructure and capabilities in recycling, organics and renewable energy, WM provides environmental solutions to and collaborates with its customers in helping them pursue their sustainability goals. In North America, WM has the largest disposal network and collection fleet, is the largest recycler and is a leader in beneficial use of landfill gas, with a growing network of renewable natural gas plants and the most landfill gas-to-electricity plants, as well as the largest heavy-duty natural gas truck fleet in the industry. WM Healthcare Solutions provides collection and disposal services of regulated medical waste and secure information destruction services in the U.S., Canada and Western Europe. To learn more about WM and the company's sustainability progress and solutions, visit Sustainability.WM.com.

Polypropylene Cups Earn Widely Recyclable Designation, Expanding Access to Curbside Recycling Nationwide

A polypropylene cup is distributed into a curbside recycling bin.

Next Article

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani wants to crack down on 'bad landlords.' First he has to find them

NEW YORK (AP) — On a recent weeknight, three tenants of an aging Bronx building were trading apartment horror stories inside a packed ballroom lined with city bureaucrats.

The occasion was the third in a series of “rental rip-off hearings,” a new forum launched by New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani for disgruntled renters to air their complaints directly to housing officials — and in some cases, the mayor himself.

As she waited in line, Gulhayo Yuldosheva said she worried that noxious mold in her apartment had worsened her child’s asthma. Nearby, her downstairs neighbor, Marina Quiroz, was showing a video of rats scurrying through her kitchen to a representative of the city’s tenant protection office.

Ann Maitin, a longtime resident of the same building, had just met with the mayor.

“He let me go over my three minutes,” she said, holding up a spiral notebook’s worth of grievances.

Mamdani, a democratic socialist swept into office on a promise of zealous tenant advocacy, framed the event as a struggle session for renters, assuring the standing room only crowd that their stories would guide the city's efforts “to actually hold landlords accountable when they don’t follow the law."

To the residents of 705 Gerard Avenue, this raised a practical problem: No one seemed to know who actually owned their building.

“It feels like such a basic question,” said Maitin, a retired Verizon technician who recently organized the building’s tenant association. “You’d think we’d have the right to that information.”

Their situation is hardly unique. As corporate owners and investor groups have grown their share of the rental market in New York City, they are increasingly shielding their identities behind limited liability companies, or LLCs.

The practice, which has also been spreading nationally, is legal. But experts warn it could complicate Mamdani’s promised crackdown, making it harder for the city and tenants to track the chronically negligent owners whose buildings the mayor has vowed to target and even seize.

“There are these big slumlords that everyone knows are doing predatory investment, but pinning them down is going to be difficult, for the LLC reason,” said Oksana Mironova, a housing policy analyst at the Community Service Society. “That’s a problem for the administration, and it’s even worse for tenants.”

For Yuldosheva and her neighbors, finding their landlord is one of many problems afflicting their six-story building near Yankee Stadium.

Heat and hot water outages are regular enough that some tenants keep a thermometer on their fridge and the city’s complaint hotline on speed dial. Common areas are often filthy, and increasingly populated by drug users. Getting help with an urgent maintenance issue “feels like waiting for Christmas in July,” said Maitin.

During a monthslong elevator outage, a tenant who uses a wheelchair, Tommy Rodriguez, said he was forced to “slide down the steps, like a kid.” Calls to the building management about a repair timeline went unanswered, he said.

Growing up in the building in the 1980s, Rodriguez recalled the previous landlord as a friendly and responsive neighborhood presence.

“This felt like a home before,” Rodriguez said. “Now they treat us the same as the rats.”

A large rodent had recently chewed a hole through his couch cushion. He handled the extermination himself, with a two-by-four.

Recently, tenants received a clue about their landlord, following the partial collapse of another Bronx building. The man identified in news stories as the owner of that building, David Kleiner, shared a Brooklyn office with their building manager, Binyomin Herzl.

A handful of tenants visited each of the building’s 72 units, logging an array of decrepit conditions and unusual alterations.

“We didn’t want to become the next news story,” said Yuldosheva, pointing to a crack in the wall of a bedroom shared by her three children — a result, she feared, of the subway that rumbles just below her windows.

Lawsuits show that Herzl has been ordered to pay more than $100,000 for violations across at least six Bronx buildings, several of which were found by a judge to pose an imminent hazard.

Reached by phone, Herzl said he didn't own any of those properties, but simply acted as a middleman between tenants and the true owners, whom he declined to list. “There’s no one landlord,” he said. “It’s a group of investors.”

Kleiner, who was previously featured on the city’s “worst landlord” list, confirmed his partial ownership of 705 Gerard in a brief phone call, but declined further comment.

Herzl, meanwhile, attributed the tenants’ complaints to “normal wear and tear” of a nearly century old building. He said Mamdani should focus on improving the city’s public housing, rather than going after private landlords.

“Our buildings look like five star hotels against his,” he added.

When landlords refuse to address a serious violation, like heat or hot water outages, the city can step in and order repairs, then bill the owner directly.

In the last three years, inspectors have ordered emergency repairs at 38 buildings that list either Herzl or Kleiner as an owner, according to records provided by the city’s housing department. The men have been billed $446,521 for those repairs.

Mamdani has proposed using such fines as a vehicle to bring distressed rental properties under city stewardship, by aggressively pursuing liens on delinquent landlords and buying up their portfolios through foreclosure auctions.

Just as the city can shut down unsanitary restaurants, Mamdani has said, landlords that “repeatedly put New Yorkers at risk will not be allowed to operate in New York City — with no exceptions."

In reality, the process is resource-intensive and legally fraught. It is made more complex by the nest of LLCs often used by landlords to obfuscate the full scope of their portfolios, according to Cea Weaver, director of the Mayor’s Office to Protect Tenants.

“It’d be great to have a better sense of who owns the buildings that we are regulating and overseeing,” she said.

State legislation that would have made it easier to identify LLC owners was recently vetoed by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul amid pressure from landlords.

Kenny Burgos, the CEO of the New York Apartment Association, a landlord lobbying group, said Mamdani’s tenant proposals — including freezing the rent for regulated tenants — would force landlords to cut back on maintenance and services.

“That’s going to take away from the elevator budget, the boiler budget, the heating budget,” he said. “It’s a question of math: These buildings are crumbling because of policy, not because of bad landlords.”

He characterized the rental rip-off hearings as “show trials” that took a “tribal approach” to the city’s affordable housing crisis.

Despite the combative branding — “New Yorkers vs. Bad Landlords,” blares one promotion — the Bronx event mostly resembled a standard constituent service night: City officials fielded questions about local laws, helped residents with paperwork and connected them to service providers.

Maitin left feeling “glad to be heard by someone who can actually do something about the problem,” but felt it was too early to tell “if it’s all talk."

The next morning, she was surprised to find the building’s superintendent applying a fresh coat of paint to a staircase. Outside, workers were removing scaffolding that had been in front of the building for years.

“I think they caught wind of the rental rip-off,” Maitin said. “They’re scared.”

FILE - New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks to reporters during a news conference in New York, Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)

FILE - New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani speaks during a Rental Ripoff Hearing at Fordham University on Wednesday, March 11, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki, File)

Gulhayo Yuldosheva's children get ready for school in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Francisco Medina, left, cleans his apartment next to his relative, Maria Frias, right, in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Gulhayo Yuldosheva, 33 , center right, Marina Quiroz, 65, top, pose for a portrait with other two residents in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Tommy Rodriguez, right, talks to his relative, Francisco Medina, left, in an apartment building where tenants report maintenance issues and pest infestations, in the Bronx borough of New York, Tuesday, March 17, 2026. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Marina Quiroz stands in her living room in a Bronx apartment building, where tenants report maintenance issues, pest infestations, Tuesday, March 17, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Andres Kudacki)

Recommended Articles

Chelsea drops Enzo Fernandez after ‘a line was crossed’ with Madrid comments

XCharge North America and JOJO Superfast EV Charging Launch New Midwest EV Charging Infrastructure

Concerns over a Nebraska hospital show how a $50B rural health fund is coming up short

3 Greek ministers quit as EU investigates alleged farm subsidy fraud

Trump offers murky path forward for Republicans as Iran war clouds midterm elections

Russia strikes targets in Kyiv region as Ukraine holds door open for Easter truce

Pakistanis face unprecedented fuel price rise of up to 54% as global oil price spikes