In the How2Recycle Guidelines for Use released on January 31, 2025, aluminum and steel aerosol cans were downgraded from “Widely Recyclable” to “Check Locally” in the U.S. How2Recycle would like to issue a clarification around the wording used to describe access to recycling for this format.
Explicit Acceptance Hasn’t Decreased
Current data does not show a decrease in explicit community acceptance of aerosols for recycling — in fact, explicit acceptance actually increased from the baseline established in the 2020-2021 SPC Centralized Access Study to the September 16, 2024 Acceptance Data published by The Recycling Partnership and How2Recycle.
What’s Driving the Change? The How2Recycle Methodology Has Evolved
Our methodology for reviewing access has evolved from the days when we relied solely on the SPC Centralized Access Study for access data, which showed 29% explicit acceptance for aluminum aerosol containers and 30% for steel aerosol containers. How2Recycle now includes acceptance data from The Recycling Partnership’s semi-annual report, U.S. Community Recycling Program Acceptance Data, as a key source for our label assessments, which shows 39% explicit acceptance for both aluminum and steel aerosol containers as of September 16, 2024.
Given the nature of aerosols, specifically the potential safety issues in MRFs when they’re not completely emptied by consumers, How2Recycle and The Recycling Partnership have aligned on their decision to only consider explicit acceptance towards the national acceptance rate. This means that a community must explicitly say that aerosols are accepted for recycling for it to count toward the material’s national acceptance rate. At this time, we will not count communities that do not mention acceptance of aerosols in their recycling program, or communities that only have generalized information, such as “accepts metal.”
At this point, there is not sufficient evidence suggesting that communities with vague acceptance language around aerosols are in fact willing to accept aerosols. Because of these factors, we’ve made the decision to err on the side of caution and only consider explicit acceptance towards our national acceptance rate for aluminum and steel aerosol containers.
How2Recycle acknowledges that there is room for improvement in ambiguous community messaging around specific packaging formats. Given this ambiguity, we believe that this methodology is the most responsible way to interpret the data at this time.
Acknowledgements
How2Recycle is grateful to the Aerosol Recycling Initiative for their continuous efforts to drive an increase in the acceptance rate for aerosols recyclability and also for raising awareness about how to properly dispose of this product type.