CRI Bids Farewell to Founder Pat Franklin,
Welcomes New Executive Director

Washington, DC (April 23, 2007) - Scott Trundle, Chairman of the Board of the Container Recycling Institute (CRI) announced that founder and long-time Executive Director Pat Franklin retired this week.  “As CRI’s originator and founder, Pat Franklin has been its brain trust and inspiration for 16 years,” said Mr. Trundle.     
 
Ms. Franklin founded the Container Recycling Institute in February of 1991, to provide research on beverage container sales and recycling trends and to serve as a clearinghouse on container deposit laws.  Rigid beverage containers are made from aluminum, plastic or glass, and are readily recyclable.  Using scrap bottles and cans instead of virgin materials, conserves energy and natural resources and is cost-effective for manufacturers of containers and other products.  
 
Analysis by CRI shows that 135 billion of more than 215 billion beverage containers sold in the United States in 2005 were wasted rather than recycled. Despite an increase in recycling programs, the newer single-serving packages and an explosion of non-carbonated beverages on the market have out-paced recycling efforts.  
 
“The wasting patterns that prompted me to start this organization are still part of the national culture.  I leave CRI with mixed emotions because there is still much work to be done,” said Ms. Franklin. “The fact that 7 out of 10 recyclable beverage containers are not recycled is appalling and a dreadful waste of energy and material resources.  This wasting trend must be reversed.”
 
Mr. Trundle also announced the naming of Ms. Franklin’s successor, Elizabeth (Betty) McLaughlin.  Ms. McLaughlin brings nineteen years of non-profit environmental advocacy and public policy experience to CRI. She comes to the organization from the Connecticut Audubon Society, where she served as Environmental Affairs Director.   Previously, Ms. McLaughlin served as the Legislative Issues Director for the Sierra Club/Connecticut Chapter, Executive Director of the Farmington (CT) River Watershed Association and Connecticut Director for the Regional Plan Association.  
 
“Like so many of the thousands of people who have come to rely on CRI’s well-researched, sourced and reliable beverage container waste and recycling data, I know what a valuable resource CRI is,” said Ms. McLaughlin. “I am committed to ensuring that we continue to provide the high-quality research that has been the hallmark of CRI.” She added that Research Director Jenny Gitlitz will remain with the organization..
 
“This is a watershed time for recycling in the United States,” McLaughlin said. “As leaders look for solutions to the global challenges of climate change, energy consumption, and resources depletion, the economic and societal benefits of recycling are being re-discovered. For those of us who have always been advocates of less waste and more producer responsibility, this renewed interest in recycling is certainly welcome news.”
 
“If at the same time one can be sad to be losing an outstanding leader and happy to have found a capable successor, then as chair of CRI, I most certainly am both,” said Mr. Trundle of the leadership transition.  

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The Container Recycling Institute is a non-profit organization that analyzes beverage container sales, recycling, and wasting trends, and advocates policy measures to increase recycling and reduce the environmental damages from container production and disposal.


Contact:     
Betty McLaughlin (202) 263-0999
bmclaughlin@container-recycling.org
 
Pat Franklin: (703) 304-3546
pfranklin@container-recycling.org 

Cost of Beverages Soars –
So does Beverage Container Waste

American consumers pay more for beverages, get less for their money
Taxpayers pay the tab for cleaning up mountains of beverage container litter and waste

Washington, DC (February 28, 2007) — In a report released today by the Container Recycling Institute (CRI), a DC-based non-profit environmental and research organization, included data showing that American consumers spent more than $270 billion on beverages they consumed in 2005 (excluding milk)--29% more than they spent in 2002, even though consumption remained unchanged at 121.5 gallons per capita. The increase in the cost of beverages was almost three times the increase in the Consumer Price Index.

According to the report, titled “Water, Water Everywhere: The Growth of Non-Carbonated Beverages in the U.S.,” sales of plastic water bottles 1 liter and less increased more than 100% from 2002 to 2005. Pat Franklin, CRI executive director attributes much of the increase in beverage dollar sales and increased litter and waste to the move to smaller sizes. “Beverage producers are pushing the small, single-serve, containers that are consumed on the go, and more and more of them are ending up in landfills or as litter,” she said.

“The beverage industry--including producers, bottlers and distributors--is profiting from increased unit sales, and taxpayers are stuck with the tab for cleaning up mountains of litter and burying growing numbers of containers in landfills,” said Franklin.

The report included data showing that Americans purchased 215 billion beverage containers (excluding milk) in 2005: 21 billion more than in 2002. Jenny Gitlitz, CRI research director said, “A disproportionate number of the increase, 19 billion, were non-fizzy drink containers, but growth in the non-carbonated categories was eclipsed by growth in bottled water sales, which nearly doubled over a four-year period.” The report showed that plastic bottled water sales in 2005 hit 29.8 billion, double the number of units sold in 2002, and seven times the units sold in 1997.

According to the report, beer and carbonated soft drinks comprised 84% of the beverage market in 1997 while non-carbonated beverages made up just 14%. By 2005 non-carbonated drinks had grown to 27% while beer and soda market share dropped to 71%. The new data shows that at the current growth rate, units of non-carbonated beverage containers will overtake soft drink container sales by 2010. Plastic water bottles, at 29 billion in 2005, have already surpassed the number of plastic soda bottles sold.

“There are significant environmental benefits from keeping hundreds of billion beverage cans and bottles out of our nation’s landfills, waterways, roadways and recreation areas,” said Gitlitz. “But there are upstream environmental consequences that are even more egregious and yet are rarely talked about. For example,” she said, “in 2005, manufacturing 144 billion new beverage containers from raw materials—to replace those wasted--consumed the energy equivalent of 53.5 million barrels of crude oil equivalent and produced approximately 4.8 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions.”

“While the environmental benefits of recycling beverage containers are well known,” said Franklin, “the economic benefits are less well known. Few policymakers are aware of the fact that many businesses profit from using post-consumer glass bottles, plastic bottles and aluminum cans. Both processors and end-users of these scrap containers would benefit from having a steady supply of high-quality post-consumer beverage containers to use as feedstocks to make new containers and other products.”

“Because market share of “non-carbs” has increased from nearly zero twenty-five years ago to 27% today and growing,” said Franklin, “we’re likely to see continued efforts to update container deposit laws to include these popular drinks that would have been included if they had been on the market at the time the laws were enacted.

Consumers,” she continued, “are spending more on packaged beverages and getting less for their money, so it would seem that adding a small, fully refundable deposit of a nickel or a dime to bottled water and other non-carbonated drinks would not pose a hardship on beverage drinkers.”

The report pointed out that attempts should also be made to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of curbside recycling programs nationwide, and to increase recycling options in public places. Recovering more beverage containers, according to the report, makes environmental sense, and it makes business sense.

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The report can be found at www.container-recycling.org/assets/pdfs/reports/2007-waterwater.pdf

Headquartered in Washington, DC, the Container Recycling Institute is a non-profit (501c3) organization that analyzes beverage container sales, recycling, and wasting trends, and advocates policy measures to increase recycling and reduce the environmental damages from container production and disposal.

For Immediate Release
December 8, 2006

Plastic bottle recycling fails to keep up with increasing sales:
Wasting up by 136 thousand tons

Washington, DC (December 8, 2006) — The Container Recycling Institute (CRI), a non-profit environmental group that studies container sales and recycling trends, notes that the recent increase in the recycling rate for PET plastic bottles pale in comparison to the increase in trashed plastic bottles.

According toCRI, 2005 data relesased recently by the Sonoma, California based National Association of Plastic Container Resources (NAPCOR) showed that the volume of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic bottles recycled in 2005 rose to 1,170 million lbs and the recycling rate increased 1.4 percentage points, from 21.6% to 23.1%. --167 million pounds more than were recycled in 2004.

“This slight increase is certainly better than a decline,” said CRI executive director Pat Franklin, “but it was not the increase needed to reverse the wasting trend. At 23.1% the rate is far below the 39.7% recycling rate the industry achieved back in 1995. Franklin also noted that the volume of PET used to make new food and beverage containers decreased last year. “With the Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo committing to using 10% recycled content in their PET bottles, it’s difficult to understand this decline,” she added.

CRI research director Jenny Gitlitz said, “While PET bottle recycling rose by 167 million lbs last year, wasting increased by 271million lbs (or 136 thousand tons) during the same period. We’re now trashing almost 2 million tons of PET annually: up from 588 thousand tons wasted a decade ago. Wasting this much PET is bad for the environment; it’s a tremendous and unnecessary waste of a petroleum product,” she added. According to Gitlitz, “About 18 million barrels of crude oil equivalent went down the drain last year when these 2 million tons of PET bottles were landfilled instead of recycled.”

Franklin attributed the slow rate of recycling increase to the inability of current recycling programs to keep up with the rapid pace of increasing beverage sales.

“Bottled water sales have skyrocketed for over 5 years, from 3.3 billion in 1997 to an estimated 26 billion in 2005, and show no signs of slowing,” she said. “Sales of other beverages packaged in PET—sports drinks, teas, and juices—are increasing, too. Total PET bottle sales have risen from 2 million pounds in 1995 to 5 million pounds in 2005.”

“But it’s not just the number of additional beverages sold,” Franklin explained, “it’s the location: vending machines in schools and other public spaces, convenience stores, etc. These containers purchased for consumption away from home cannot be captured by residential curbside recycling programs.”

Franklin added that the industry has historically opposed container deposit laws, or “bottle bills,” which provide powerful consumer incentives to recycle. In the eleven states that have bottle bills, PET containers that have a nickel or dime refund value are recycled at rates that are 3 to 4 times the rate in the 39 non-bottle bill states.