Trends in Waste Management
Waste streams generated during normal industrial operations may be recycled, combusted for energy recovery, treated, or released into the environment. For example, facilities report the recovery of solvents as a recycling method, or the destruction of chemicals in waste through incineration as treatment. This figure shows the 10-year trend in TRI chemical waste managed on site and off site.
Note: This chart excludes natural gas processing facilities which were not required to report to TRI prior to 2022.
From 2014 to 2023:
- Waste managed: 4.6 billion pound increase (+15%).
- Recycling: 7.0 billion pound increase (+49%), partially driven by better identification of recovery, reuse and recycling steps at TRI facilities.
- Disposal or other releases: 838 million pound decrease (-21%).
- Treatment: 1.4 billion pound decrease (-17%).
- Energy recovery: 233 million pound decrease (-7%).
From 2022 to 2023:
- Waste managed: 3.5 billion pound increase (+11%), largely due to an increase in recycling.
- Recycling: 4.0 billion pound increase (+24%), driven by two facilities that reported a combined 4.2-billion-pound increase in n-hexane recycled on site as part of a soybean extraction process.
Facilities report both on- and off-site waste management. The following chart shows the relative quantities of on-site and off-site waste management methods for 2023.
In 2023, 90% of waste was managed on site.
- Most waste managed off site was recycled. Most of this recycling was reported by the primary and fabricated metals sectors, which together accounted for 59% of off-site recycling in 2023. Facilities in these sectors often send scrap metal containing TRI chemicals such as zinc and copper off site for recycling.
This page was published in August 2025 and uses the 2023 TRI National Analysis dataset made public in TRI Explorer in October 2024.