Abstract Recycling is a preferable alternative to the traditional landfilling is solid waste management, especially in urban areas. However, globalisation influences recycling due to volatile markets and creates unforeseeable barriers. While local authorities promote recycling, material recovery agents, solid waste manager interact at a different scales with different plans and spatial contexts. With less coordinated plans and fragmented programs at local level, performance of post-consumer plastics recycling has been less likely to be successful through planning only at local level. The fragmentation of decision making, planning with a regional approach is in need for improving recycling performance. In North Carolina, the planning occurs at municipal level in public domain and the solid waste management occurs at regional level involving private business, leading to a mismatch in the spatial context. By improving quality and increasing quantity of recyclables generated from households and business, embracing material recovery facility, and coordinating the solid waste management activities, planning can play an important role in the plastics recycling value chain reaching better states. Methodology A qualitative research approach is applied to the study. The approach includes 1) information interviews from 3 academic researchers, 2 private industry consultants, 3 municipal solid waste manager, 14 owners and operators of the recycling facilities, and 2 economic development experts, 2) archival research of journal articles, news articles, website publically available database, government and organization reports, and internal reports, and 3) case study, selecting North Carolina as a base model to learn about implication of recycling to urban planning. Data collection spanned from September, 2016 to February, 2017. Further information of contacts can be found in Appendix. Acronyms ABS acrylonitrile butadiene styrene ACC American Chemistry Council APR Association of Postconsumer Plastic Recyclers DSM Decision support models EPA The United States Environmental Protection Agency EPR extended producer responsibility HDPE high-density polyethylene LCA life cycle assessment LDPE low density polyethylene LF Landfill LLDPE linear low density polyethylene MRF materials recovery facility MSW municipal solid waste NC DEQ North Carolina Department of Environment Quality PCPP Post-consumer plastics recycling PE polyethylene PET polyethylene terephthalate PP polypropylene PS polystyrene PVC polyvinyl chloride RBAC Recycling Business Assistance Center RDF refuse derived fuel RIC Resin Identification Code SPC Sustainable Packaging Coalition UNEP United Nations Environment Program U.S. EPA United States Environmental Protection Agency WDP Waste-derived products WTE waste-to-energy Introduction With limited landfill capacity and rapid increase in waste volume, municipal solid wastes, especially post-consumer packaging products, have become a more urgent issue in urban areas. Attempts to divert recyclables from landfills has received a lot of attention in academic research. Due to market risks, low quality supply, and limited capacity, however, the recycling market shows unstable trends over the last several years, with plastics recycling rate significant lower than other recyclable products (Al-Salem, Lettieri & Baeyens, 2009). To accommodate sustainable solid waste management in an economically viable manner, city and regional infrastructure planning will have to take multiple spatial scales into consideration. A regional network can impact the efficiency and accessibility of individual programs through information sharing, infrastructure support, and cooperation. Taking North Carolina as a case, this study focuses on the factors influencing local and regional recycling industry, solid waste management strategies accommodating the sustainable development pattern, and the economic development opportunities. Recycling involves complex coordination between individuals, organizations, municipalities, private business, and policies influencing directly or indirectly along the value chain. Such complex system demands a regional cooperation network established through public and private efforts. Post-Landfilling Age in North Carolina Shifting from landfilling to alternative municipal solid waste (MSW) management strategy, North Carolina has moved away from a system where local, government-operated facilities dispose of waste within county boundaries. The closure of the municipal solid waste landfills (MSWLFs) did not come as surprise: The Clean Air Act instituted in 1990 forced the closure of aged or smaller landfills that might generate pollution to neighboring communities. As a result, MSW do not usually end up in individual landfills within each solid waste management unit-usually a county. They would be sent to transfer centers where wastes from multiple counties concentrates and ended up somewhere outside the origins of the sources. On the other hand, alternative MSW management strategy attracts these solid waste management units to rethink the new spatial patterns and the consequences of keeping the wastes out of the MSWLFs. To accommodate the changing management, planning will have to rethink about the approaches to integrate the flows of wastes into the metabolism of urban living. Figure 1 Active and Dated MSWLFs in North Carolina (Source: NC DEQ, 2016) Figure 2 MSWLF Used by County, 2002 (Source: NC DEQ, 2015) The limited landfilling capacity forces the solid waste departments in each county to plan for more sustainable alternatives. In North Carolina, a county is a solid waste service unit that is responsible for providing waste-related services within the county boundary. In 2014, the total remaining capacity of all North Carolina MSW landfills measures approximately 234 million tons, and the state capacity equals 31 years of waste disposal if North Carolina’s rate of landfill use remains steady at the level of 7.3 million tons per year (North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ), 2015). The dynamics of economic incentives of directly disposing wastes also changed the decision-making dynamics for households and business. Currently the average tipping fee of landfilling MSW in North Carolina is about $49 per ton, while sending to recycling facilities (including material recovery facility and transfer center) is $42 per ton (NC DEQ, 2016). North Carolina are also seeing heavier burden in saving money and environment by diverting the wastes from landfills. The cost for handling solid waste management used to be offset by the revenue generated by landfills charging tipping fees. With more landfills closing up, counties without one will have to pay transfer stations or landfills locating in other counties to tip the MSW. Solid waste departments will have to divert as much MSW as they could to make the service sustainable. Yet with concentration of population and increasing per capita generation rate, the cost for some counties has becoming even burdensome. The total amount of MSW generated in North Carolina is about 9.8 million tonnes, with the average daily per capita MSW generate rate at 6.2 pounds (equivalent to 1.13 tonnes annually) in 2016, which grew five more percent from that in 1991, and exceeds the current national average level at 4.4 pounds. Plastics Complex: Low Quantity and Bad Quality Post-consumer plastics product (PCPP) waste management is especially challenging. The environmental and health impacts caused by mishandling the plastics debris is extremely high. The persistence of macro- and micro-plastic products in land and ocean pose risks to the organisms through interfering the ingestion and digestion, or entanglement (Li, Tse, and Fok, 2016). And the PVC and PC can release toxic compounds into the air, water, and soil, bringing serious environmental concerns for human beings as well (North, & Halden, 2013; Halden, 2010). There are several different types of plastics identified by the manufacturers and recycling programs have preferences on which types can be recycled and which cannot, as opposed to accepting other recycle types without differentiating the subtypes. Plastics are a wide family of resource efficient materials derived from organic products such as cellulose, coal, natural gas, salt and, of course, crude oil. The PCPP waste refers to the waste type produced by the end consumer of a plastics product and material stream. The currently classification based on the property and applications of plastics product has been used since 1988 to guide recycling. The system of classification is called resin identification code (RIC) implemented by ASTM for recycling purpose and updated in March 2015. #1 PETE: Polyethylene terephthalate, usually for beverage bottle. #2 HDPE: High density polyethylene, usually for milk jugs and recycling bins. #3 PVC: polyvinyl chloride, usually for rigid packaging #4 LDPE: Low density polyethylene, usually for plastic bags. #5 PP: Polypropylene, usually for medicine bottle or food containers. #6 PS: Polystyrene, usually for clamshells, food containers. #7 others. (ASTM International, 2013) PCPP in this study refers to all types of plastics used for packaging that appear in MSW stream. Unlike the “recycling all or nothing” principle that is widely applied for organic, paper, glass, or metal products, specifications for recyclable plastics have been usually more confusing-usually the recycling programs only take part of the plastics in to recyclable supply chains while leaving