BIR World Mirror on Plastics – Issue October 2025: No let-up in multiple pressures burdening plastics recycling sector
A concise summary of the BIR World Mirror on Plastics – Issue October 2025. Full version with detailed market reports available in the Members Only section of the BIR website.
There have been few crumbs of comfort for the European plastics recycling industry of late. However, some optimism surrounds a new decree taking effect in France on January 1 next year which will introduce minimum recycled content requirements for certain plastic products and packaging. Plastic beverage bottles, for example, will be required to contain at least 25% rPET by 2029 and 30% from 2030 onwards.
According to the latest World Mirror publication from the BIR global recycling organisation’s Plastics Division, this development demonstrates how concrete steps can be taken to stimulate the use of recyclates in end products and offers a glimpse of what broader policy action could achieve.
Overall, however, the global plastics recycling industry appears set to enter 2026 smaller, weaker and more dependent on regulatory enforcement and incentives, it is argued. The European plastics recycling industry is under particularly intense pressure, principally because of the widening price gap between recycled material and abundant supplies of virgin. By the end of 2025, it is expected that almost 1 million tonnes of annual recycling capacity will have disappeared from Europe when compared with 2023.
The drop in virgin polymer prices has coincided with high collection, sorting and processing costs for recyclers. As a result, it is proving increasingly difficult to place recycled materials even with long-term customers, with converters switching back to the virgin option whenever the gap becomes too wide.
Recycled pellet markets across Asia continue to suffer as prime resin prices decline further, with brand owners abandoning earlier commitments to recycled content in the face of prime resin availability at lower levels. Recyclers are regularly confronted with the stark choice between reducing prices or losing business.
China’s recycled plastics market has been stable to weak, reflecting cautious downstream demand and sustained competition from low-cost virgin materials. For Malaysia’s recycling industry, the biggest threat is coming from high-level government pressure against importing plastic waste. Protests have taken place outside government departments, with recyclers arguing that imported scrap often provides cleaner, higher-quality feedstock when compared to local collections.
In India, rPET demand has collapsed following the government’s postponed enforcement of its 30% recycled-content mandate, thereby idling some 200,000 to 250,000 tonnes of annual capacity.
Meanwhile, the mechanical recycling plastics market in the Middle East is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 6.8% in the coming years. The third quarter of 2025 was a period of relative calm in terms of pricing but the market remains vulnerable to the underlying pressures of oversupply, weak demand and feedstock constraints.
In the USA, PET has been the most severely affected by a surge in low-priced imports - both virgin and recycled. In California, many reclaimers are operating at below 50% capacity, with planned facility expansions and fresh investments put on hold as operators shift into “survival mode”. While reduced shifts, workforce cuts and sharp drops in bale purchases have become the norm, a more encouraging recent development has been the sharp drop in PET bale pricing.
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With contributions from its members, BIR publishes periodical commodity reports under the label "BIR World Mirror". These detailed reports exist for Non-Ferrous Metals, Ferrous, Stainless Steel / Alloys, Paper, Plastics and Latin America and provide BIR members with up-to-date information on the respective commodity or market segment.
The report on Non-Ferrous Metals appears once every two months, whereas Ferrous, Stainless Steel, Paper and Plastics are published quarterly. Latin America is covered twice per year.