Stagnation in U.S. Recycling Rates: Evaluating the Impact of Bottle Bills and Public Investments into Recycling Education

The U.S. municipal solid waste recycling rate has remained near 32% for two decades, placing the country 30th globally. In response, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has set a national goal of achieving a 50% recycling rate by 2030, yet concrete strategies for reaching this target remain limited. Persistent challenges—such as low public participation and inadequate dissemination of effective practices—highlight the potential importance of recycling education. This study has two aims. First, we assess federal investment in recycling education through the EPA’s Environmental Education Grants Program (1992–2023) using a large language model (LLM)-assisted text-mining approach to identify recycling-focused projects. Second, we examine the factors that shape state-level recycling rates, including policy, demographic, infrastructure, and education variables. Our results show that states with bottle bills—deposit–refund laws for beverage containers—and states with higher levels of educational attainment exhibit significantly higher recycling rates. By contrast, federal investments in recycling education, as measured through the grants program, were not statistically associated with state-level recycling performance. This study introduces a novel analytic approach for evaluating how policy and educational factors contribute to state-level recycling outcomes and to national recycling performance.