Walk into any recycling facility and you’ll see the paradox: piles of neatly tied garbage bags sitting beside the materials they were meant to protect. Despite good intentions, most of those bags never get recycled and often take their contents down with them.
The reason is mechanical. Trash bags jam sorting equipment. When recyclables arrive sealed inside film, sorters can’t identify what’s inside. To avoid costly shutdowns, facilities remove the bags and send them straight to landfill or incineration, even if they’re technically recyclable.
Few centers have the specialized systems needed to reprocess flexible films like LDPE and HDPE, so operators focus on rigid plastics instead. Major CPGs are now investing in film recycling infrastructure, but until those systems scale, most bags still meet the same fate.
The path forward starts upstream: design for separation, use materials that reduce plastic at the source, and invest in infrastructure that supports true circularity.
Until then, the humble trash bag remains a reminder that not all “recyclable” plastics are truly recycled.
