Four years ago, this article looked at how major beverage companies were starting to explore sustainable plastic packaging. Companies such as Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Suntory set ambitious goals for using bio-based bottles and more recycled content. The hope was for a future where PET bottles would not rely on fossil fuels and could be recycled again and again into new containers.
That future is still out of reach. Some of the largest companies have quietly reduced their commitments, even though new technologies and policies could help. Here’s an update on the current situation.
The Recycling Reality Check
According to MIT research in the Journal of Industrial Ecology, the nationwide recycling rate for PET bottles is approximately 24% and has remained stagnant for a decade. The EPA’s most recent comprehensive data shows PET bottles were recycled at 29.1% in 2018, with overall plastic recycling at just 8.7%.
The trajectory of plastic bottles is troubling. According to CleanHub’s 2024 Plastic Perspectives Report, plastic recycling rates in the U.S. have dropped from 9% in 2018 to approximately 5% today, largely due to China’s ban on waste imports, which forced countries to reassess their systems.
Reloop’s What We Waste Dashboard reveals that between 2015 and 2024, an estimated 1.5 trillion beverage containers were sent to landfills in the U.S., including 785 billion PET bottles (that’s 2,309 bottles per person). Americans wasted an average of 504 beverage containers per person in 2024 alone, including 263 PET bottles each. If current collection rates remain unchanged, an additional 878.6 billion beverage containers will be wasted between 2025 and 2029.
Meanwhile, 83% of the plastic packaging that could be recycled curbside isn’t even being put in the bin, according to The Recycling Partnership’s 2024 State of Recycling report.
Big Brands Scale Back
The big beverage companies that once promised major changes have now scaled back their sustainability goals.
Coca-Cola, the world’s largest producer of branded plastic pollution for six consecutive years, according to Break Free From Plastics, announced what it called an “evolution” of its sustainability goals in December 2024. The company pushed its recycling targets out from 2030 to 2035 and reduced the ambition of several key commitments. Coke’s 2018 “World Without Waste” pledge to collect and recycle a bottle or can for each one sold by 2030 has been scaled back to collecting 70-75% of the equivalent number of bottles and cans annually by 2035.
Coca-Cola’s 2024 environmental update shows that only 18% of the PET it used in bottles was recycled, and the company acknowledged it “did not reduce the use of virgin plastic in the period from 2020 to 2023 due to business growth.” The company also dropped its goal of selling 25% of beverages in refillable or returnable packaging. In 2023, just 14% of Coca-Cola’s beverage volume was served in reusable packaging, and only 1.2% of its plastic packaging was reusable.
PepsiCo has followed a similar trajectory. PepsiCo had committed in 2022 to selling 20% of all beverages through reusable systems by 2030, but progress stalled at 10%. In May 2025, the company announced it was eliminating its reusable packaging targets entirely and revamping other environmental goals.
The company discontinued its goal of a 20% reduction in absolute virgin plastic use by 2030, replacing it with a 2% annual reduction target. PepsiCo’s 2024 ESG report shows the company did exceed this modest goal, reducing virgin plastic use by 5% in 2024. By 2024, 93% of Pepsi’s main packaging in key markets was designed to be recyclable, reusable, or compostable, which is close to but not quite the original 100% goal for 2025.
Critics Call Foul
Environmental advocates are more skeptical of industry promises than before. A peer-reviewed study in Science Advances looked at five years of brand audit data from 84 countries and found a clear link between how much plastic companies produce and how much branded plastic ends up in nature. The top five global brands—Coca-Cola (11%), PepsiCo (5%), Nestlé (3%), Danone (3%), and Altria (2%)—made up 24% of all branded plastic pollution found in the environment.
The researchers’ conclusion, that “[p]hasing out single-use and short-lived plastic products by the largest polluters would greatly reduce global plastic pollution,” provides a stark reality check on corporate promises.
In November 2024, Los Angeles County sued Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, alleging the companies misled the public about the recyclability of their plastic bottles and downplayed negative environmental and health impacts. The lawsuit also claimed the companies employed “disinformation campaigns” to encourage consumers to purchase single-use plastic, believing it would be recycled.
A 2024 report by the Center for Climate Integrity documented decades-long campaigns by the plastics industry to promote recycling despite internal recognition since the 1970s that it was technically and economically unfeasible at scale. California’s Attorney General filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil in September 2024, alleging that ExxonMobil promoted recycling as a solution while knowing it would never work on a large scale.
Environmental groups like NRDC have also raised concerns about “chemical recycling” or “advanced recycling,” which the plastics industry promotes as solutions. NRDC’s analysis found that pyrolysis, which makes up 80% of proposed chemical recycling facilities in the U.S., is basically a form of incineration that creates hazardous waste instead of providing a real recycling solution.
Genuine Progress: Enzymatic Recycling
There is some good news. Carbios, a French biotech company working on enzymatic recycling, has made real progress. In April 2024, it started building the world’s first industrial-scale enzymatic PET recycling plant in Longlaville, France.
This technology uses enzymes to break down PET into its basic building blocks, which can then be turned back into high-quality plastic again and again, without losing quality as in mechanical recycling. The plant will be able to process 50,000 tons of PET waste each year, equal to 2 billion colored bottles or 2.5 billion food trays. Unlike regular recycling, this process works on colored, multilayered, and contaminated plastics that are usually hard or impossible to recycle.
Carbios had to pause construction in late 2024 because of funding issues, but work started again in October 2025 after new French government incentives and agreements with L’Oréal and L’Occitane. Production is expected to begin in the second half of 2027. A new French incentive, introduced in September 2025, offers a €1,000 per ton bonus for using biorecycled plastics from hard-to-recycle waste in food packaging, giving Carbios a real market advantage.
To learn more, you can listen to a Sustainability In Your Ear interview with Carbios CEO Emmanuel Ledant.
Policy Solutions Can Help Us Gain Ground
Deposit return systems, or “bottle bills,” are still the most effective proven way to boost recycling rates. Right now, ten U.S. states have these programs. The Container Recycling Institute says states with bottle bills recycle about 70% of beverage containers, compared to 33% nationally.
Connecticut’s redemption rate rose sharply from 44% in 2023 to 65% in 2024 after the deposit increased from 5 to 10 cents and more types of containers were included. Oregon leads the country with an 87% redemption rate under its 10-cent deposit. In contrast, Massachusetts, with a 5-cent deposit and no coverage for bottled water, has a recycling rate of just 38%.
MIT researchers found that a nationwide bottle deposit program could raise PET recycling rates to 82%, meaning almost two-thirds of all PET bottles would be recycled.
In 2024, California expanded its program to cover wine and spirits containers, which could add half a billion more containers each year. Several states looked at new or updated bottle bill laws in 2025, but most did not pass.
Extended Producer Responsibility Expands
A major policy change is the quick adoption of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) laws for packaging. By late 2025, seven U.S. states—Maine, Oregon, Colorado, California, Minnesota, Maryland, and Washington—had passed broad EPR packaging laws. Now, one in five Americans lives in a state with EPR for packaging.
These laws move the cost and responsibility for managing packaging waste from local governments to producers. Colorado’s EPR law is expected to double the state’s recycling rate by 2035, bring curbside recycling to 500,000 more homes, and improve recycling for almost 200,000 rural households.
California’s SB 54 is the most ambitious law, requiring all single-use packaging to be recyclable or compostable by 2032. It also calls for a 25% cut in plastic packaging and a 65% recycling rate for plastic packaging. However, putting the law into action has been tough, and Governor Newsom paused rulemaking in May 2025 so regulators could revise the plan.
What Consumers Can Do
Even with big challenges in the system, what individuals do still makes a difference. Here are some ways to recycle more effectively:
Use deposit programs if they are available. If you live in one of the 10 states with bottle bills, returning containers for deposit makes it much more likely they will actually be recycled compared to using curbside bins.
Keep caps on bottles. Most modern recycling centers prefer caps left on because it makes bottles easier to process. This is different from past advice, but not all facilities have updated equipment yet.
Choose reusable options. The market for reusable water bottles has grown a lot, and the best way to cut plastic waste is to avoid creating it in the first place.
Support policy changes. The most effective thing individuals can do is back EPR laws and bottle bill programs in their states. States with strong policies always have higher recycling rates than those that rely on voluntary programs.
Stay up to date on local recycling programs. What you can recycle varies a lot by location. Earth911’s search tool can help you find out what is actually recyclable where you live.
The Road Ahead
In 2026, the story of the plastic bottle is about broken promises and new alternatives. Major brands have pulled back from their big voluntary commitments, proving critics right that corporate goodwill alone is not enough. At the same time, policy solutions like deposit programs and EPR laws show that regulations are what really drive change.
New technologies like Carbios’s enzymatic recycling could be real solutions, but they need investment and supportive policies to grow. The French government’s choice to offer financial incentives for biorecycled plastics shows how policy can help speed up promising technologies.
The biggest lesson from the last four years is that recycling alone cannot fix the plastic problem. Even with perfect recycling, plastic gets weaker each time it is recycled using traditional methods. Real circularity means making less plastic, using more reusable systems, and creating technologies that can recycle materials over and over without losing quality.
The best plastic bottle is still the one you never use. For the bottles we do use, real progress will take policy changes, new technology, and companies being held accountable—not just promises.
Editor’s Note: Originally published on January 26, 2022, this article was substantially updated in January 2026.