Efforts to Recycle Plastic: In 2018, approximately 29.1% of PET bottles & jars were recycled across the United States. Recycling rates of PET vary across regions and recycling programs with bottle deposit return systems achieving the highest recycling rates up to 2.5 times the national average. Existing forms of mechanical recycling diminish the quality of plastic with each recycling attempt, although work is being done to try to find ways in which recycling might restore this quality.