Plastic film recycling: an overlooked opportunity

We often focus on issues surrounding plastic bag recycling, but there is an important type of plastic that is commonly overlooked: plastic film and wrap. Plastic film recycling is a category of soft plastic that is similar to plastic grocery bags. The common exclusion of this material when talking about plastic bag recycling is potentially leaving out a vast amount of viable recyclable material that could be used to make new packaging.

What is plastic film?

Plastic film, plastic overwrap, and other soft plastic packaging is often found as an alternative packaging option for products that do not use cardboard packaging. Commonly, overwrap is found as packaging over paper towels, toilet paper, water bottles, and more.

Plastic film is made of polyethylene (PE) plastic. This type of plastic is commonly labeled #2 HDPE or #4 LDPE in the recycling loop. This does not mean all #2 and #4 plastics fall within this category, only that if it is #2 or #4 and flexible, it can be recycled with plastic grocery bags.

To be more specific about what constitutes flexible, let's clarify that if you can pull and stretch it with your hands, then it is probably plastic film. If it tears or makes a crinkling noise, it is not the type of plastic film accepted with plastic bags.

Additional materials in this category include plastic air-filled pouches for packaging, bubble wrap, dry cleaning bags, plastic bubble mailing envelopes, and plastic newspaper wrapping. For air-filled pouches, make sure to pop them before recycling them, and remove any labels from plastic bubble mailing envelopes or newspaper wrapping when applicable.

How to recycle plastic film

Plastic film is not accepted in the vast majority of curbside recycling programs. Plastic film is a type of soft plastic that is difficult to sort out and can easily get tangled in recycling center sorting machines. Unless you live in one of the rare locations that accept this material, you should never place this type of plastic in your curbside bins, but it is able to be recycled with plastic bags at designated drop-off locations.

It is important to remember that all plastic film that is meant for recycling must be clean and dry. There should be no stickers or debris on the plastic. If there is, you can remove that portion and recycle the remaining clean plastic.

Make sure you do not add any biodegradable or compostable plastic film to the bin. These types of packaging are made of an entirely different material and would contaminate a load of viable plastic film for recycling.

Where to recycle plastic film

It's quite common to find plastic bag and wrap bins at many grocery or retail stores. Many big box stores such as Walmart, Home Depot, Staples, and the majority of grocery store chains accept plastic bags for recycling. There is typically a bin in or around the entrance of these stores specifically meant for bag and film recycling.

These sites also provide plastic bag and film recycling resources for you to locate bins near you:

• Bag and Film Recycling
• NexTrex
• Earth 911

As with any recycling question, it's always worthwhile to check with your local recycling program to see if they accept plastic film or shopping bags as a drop-off item even if they do not accept them with curbside pick-ups.

How to recycle more

Plastic film is an often overlooked material that is completely recyclable through these drop-off programs. Since only about 9% of plastic produced is recycled, we need to make sure we are getting the plastics that are recyclable to the right places. Knowing what is and is not recycling can help us recover more materials in order to use less natural resources for new products.

The EPA estimates that 14.5 million tons of plastic packaging and containers are produced annually.

Now that you know a large amount of soft plastic packaging is actually accepted with plastic grocery bags, you can start helping to recover more materials for recycling.