Datadory notebook
How Market Researchers Use Metal, Glass & Plastic Containers Data
1,744 datasets. Pick your catch. Every guide here is built on what the catalog can actually prove.
1,744 datasets. Pick your catch.
How do market researchers actually use metal, glass and plastic containers data?
A researcher picking up this category usually has three jobs on the desk: size the container market by material and country, verify the recycling numbers a client wants to quote, and find a defensible demand series before commissioning a survey. Publicly available data covers all three, which is unusual for a manufacturing vertical.
The catch every analyst hits: the richest commercial series (current-quarter shipments) sit behind association memberships, while the deepest free series (waste and recovery statistics) run one to two years behind the calendar.
Can trade-association shipment series support a demand forecast?
Yes, with a structural caveat: associations publish long histories free and sell the present. The Can Manufacturers Institute - Metal Can Industry Statistics releases free PDFs of US beverage can shipments covering 1960-2020 and food and general line can shipments from 1970 through 2025, each series roughly 55-65 annual rows. Current-year figures are reserved for members because the underlying Metal Can Shipments Report is a member product - treat the open record as a six-decade trend base, not a leading indicator. CMI adds recycling rates for 2020-2023 with published targets to 2050, a free-to-use can-recycling impact calculator whose results CMI states may be used in any communications, and an economic-impact footprint spanning facilities across 32 states.
What supply-side signals can researchers monitor between waves?
For federal discovery, the US data.gov Catalog - Packaging/Container Datasets exposes 552,271 cataloged records through a metadata API harvested daily, covering EPA, FDA and Census contributions - useful for locating niche government series (food-contact rules, PFAS studies, patent activity) before concluding no public source exists.
Where to go next
For the page-level version of this shortlist, see metal, glass & plastic containers data for market researchers, or start from the curated free metal-glass-plastic-containers datasets and best metal-glass-plastic-containers datasets rankings.
Pick up where this leaves off
Every one of these ships with sample rows before you commit to anything.
Eurostat Packaging Waste Statistics (env_waspac)
value · waste · wst_oper
UK National Packaging Waste Database (NPWD) Public Summary Data
2025_H1 · 2023_H1
UK data.gov.uk Packaging Datasets (Environment Agency, Defra)
title · publisher · record_revised …+3 more
Can Manufacturers Institute - Metal Can Industry Statistics
year · total_cans_bn · category_shipments_bn …+6 more
Glass Packaging Institute Facts, Recycling & Shipment Data
plant · state · of_employees …+4 more
Container Recycling Institute - Beverage Container Data Archive
title · year_span · materials …+5 more
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Get a sampleQuestions worth asking
Is Eurostat packaging waste data usable in commercial research reports?
Yes. Eurostat Packaging Waste Statistics (env_waspac) is free under commercial delivery terms 4.0: reproduction and redistribution are allowed with attribution reading "Source: Eurostat". Roughly 97,083 observations cover glass, plastics, paper, wood and metal packaging across 32 countries from 1997 to 2023, exported as JSON-stat, SDMX, TSV or XLSX.
How far back do US can shipment records go?
Can Manufacturers Institute publishes free PDFs of US beverage can shipments covering 1960-2020 and food and general line can shipments from 1970 to 2025. Current-year statistics are members-only because the Metal Can Shipments Report is a member product, so the open record works best as a historical trend base.