) Progressive Bag Affiliates (PBA) has announced three new recycling partnerships that will launch during Earth Month in a bid to "to spread the message about the importance of recycling plastic bags." In Philadelphia, the PBA has partnered with Keep Philadelphia Beautiful and the Pennsylvania Food Merchants Assn. to launch a citywide plastic-bag recycling education campaign called "Bring It Back Philly." In Washington state's King County, the PBA is working with city and school officials in the "Bag Your Bags, Bring 'em Back" collection challenge at Kennydale Elementary School. In Florida, the PBA will initiate a plastic-bag recycling campaign dubbed "A Bag's Life." Described as a community-based public education campaign, this effort is intended to increase awareness of the growing number of collection points for plastic bags and wraps in Florida.

Overall, the ACC says hundreds of new recycling bins for plastic bags and product wraps will roll out around the country in April as municipal leaders, local businesses, and community partners join together to boost plastic-bag recycling.

According to recently released data (see article here), the recycling rate for plastic bags and product wraps has doubled since 2005, with an estimated 832,394,000 lb of post-consumer plastic film recovered in 2008. Last year, the PBA announced the goal of including 40% recycled content in all plastic shopping bags made by member companies by 2015. The PBA's membership is composed of leading bag manufacturers bags and polyethylene resin suppliers, including Advance Polybag Inc., The Dow Chemical Company, ExxonMobil Corporation, Hilex Poly Co. LLC., NOVA Chemicals Inc., Superbag Corporation, Total Petrochemicals USA Inc., and Unistar Plastics LLC. —[email protected]