America’s Recycling System Is Working — Just Not for America

Recycling reduces waste, but imported materials are draining their value. ReMade in America is a call to rebuild domestic markets and American jobs.

By Heidi Sanborn and Heath Nettles, National Stewardship Action Council 

Every November, America Recycles Day invites us to think about what happens to the materials we use daily. For decades, recycling has been one of the most visible ways people show they care about our life-sustaining planet and keeping our communities clean. It’s a tangible, easy way to make a difference where we live, work, play, and learn. 

And it worked. Recycling has created millions of jobs, reduced waste, lowered demand for virgin resources, and helped protect air and water. But the system that once powered local economies is faltering. Across America, recyclers and manufacturers face a flood of imported virgin and recycled materials that drive prices down and domestic recyclers out of business. 

The same bottles, cans, and cartons companies sell—and that people responsibly recycle—are collected, sorted, and ready to purchase, yet many companies aren’t buying back that material to remanufacture, instead opting to import recycled content. Too often, they sit on the proverbial sales floor, waiting for value that never comes. When that happens, we lose more than materials. We lose resources like rare earth metals we need to make new products,  jobs, and the ability to strengthen our economy through what we already have in hand. 

ReMade in America is not a slogan or a campaign. It’s a call to action—to maximize the value of recycling by keeping materials and jobs in America. 

When recycled content is collected, processed, and remanufactured here, everyone benefits. Local economies grow as new products are made from recovered materials. And, they save money on disposal costs and avoid the constant battles over landfill siting and expansion because no one wants to live near a landfill or an incinerator. 

Transportation emissions drop because goods travel shorter distances. Workers gain reliable, good-paying jobs that can’t be outsourced. Businesses build secure, resilient supply chains. Communities stay cleaner and healthier. 

This is what Americans value: fresh air, clean water, good jobs, and a strong economy that rewards responsibility. Yet the way our recycling system operates today, where materials are sold to brokers who sell to the highest bidder overseas, or producers choose cheaper imported recycled materials to feed their plants, doesn’t deliver those values. Too much of what we recover leaves the country or worse, loses its value entirely while the recycling plants that depend on recycled content struggle to find a stable domestic supply. 

Recycling has proven its worth. It reduces virgin extraction and the harm it does to natural systems, conserves energy, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions. But it isn’t creating the value it could. The next step is to rebuild the market so recycled content made in America is valued and used by American manufacturers. 

That means leadership from both the public and private sectors: companies choosing domestic over foreign feedstock, governments investing in modern collection and processing infrastructure, and consumers buying products made with post-consumer recycled materials. Technology exists. The workforce exists. What’s needed now is the will to act with producers choosing American recycled materials, governments choosing policies to ensure collection of those materials, and brokers selling pre-processed feedstock to American manufacturers using our own recycled content. 

Every ton of material we reuse or recycle keeps dollars in local economies, cuts pollution, and reinforces the foundation of a circular economy that benefits everyone. 

On this America Recycles Day, the message is simple: what’s made in America should be remade in America. Let’s keep our communities clean, build resilient American supply chains, and supporting jobs and our economy, right here at home. 

Learn more about the movement for ReMade in America at nsaction.us/remade

Sign the ReMade Pledge