plastic recycling
The third session of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution negotiations were held in Nairobi, Kenya last November. (Credit: UNEP/Ahmed Nayim Yussuf)
This will be a big year in shaping the future of chemical recycling
As of September 2023, the 11 constructed chemical recycling facilities in the country are capable of processing 459,280 tons of waste plastic each year, using pyrolysis and gasification to convert it into fuel or chemicals that can then be used to create new plastic, according to a report from Beyond Plastics and IPEN (the International Pollutants Elimination Network). At full capacity, those facilities can process about 1.3% of the country’s plastic waste, the report found. Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics, told Environmental Health News (EHN) at least twice as many new facilities have been proposed, some of which haven’t yet advanced past a press release but all of which are emboldened by a flurry of state laws loosening regulations on the controversial practice.
In 2017, Florida became the first state in the country to exempt chemical recycling from solid waste regulations and ensure it would be regulated as manufacturing. The following year, Wisconsin and Georgia did the same, allowing facilities to skirt the environmental oversight of waste management plants while also opening them up to a larger universe of taxpayer subsidies, Enck said.
Twenty-four states have now passed similar legislation, according to the industry association American Chemistry Council, and bills are making the rounds in many more. Renee Sharp, strategic adviser for environmental health advocate Safer States, told EHN the environmental community was “caught flat-footed” by the spread of industry-backed laws that ease the development of new facilities. “We’ve been playing catch-up, but we’re catching up very fast,” she said.
A bill introduced in Maine last year was among the first state-level efforts to push back against the tide by declaring that “advanced recycling does not constitute recycling.” A failed Rhode Island bill, meanwhile, would have prohibited the construction of chemical recycling facilities. Peter Blair, policy and advocacy director for Just Zero, a waste-reduction advocate, said he expects that bill to be refiled this year and that more states will follow Maine’s lead.
Environmental advocates argue that advanced or chemical recycling is an insufficient answer to the plastics crisis that also pollutes neighboring communities. Enck called it “more of a marketing ploy than an actual solution to the problem.” She argues the “dismal” U.S. plastic recycling rate of 5% to 6% is a reason to reduce plastic production rather than supporting the status quo with chemical recycling.
Greenhouse gas emissions from plastic waste pyrolysis are also 10 to 100 times worse than those from the production of virgin plastic and the majority of output from the process comes in the form of process fuel, emissions and hazardous waste, the Beyond Plastics report found. Plastic additives that can be released during the chemical recycling process can “disrupt endocrine function and increase risk for male reproductive birth defects, infertility, obesity, cardiovascular disease, renal disease and cancers,” the report said.
Craig Cookson, senior director of plastics sustainability for the American Chemistry Council (ACC), said states’ interest in clearing the path for chemical recycling reflects a desire to “bring new, innovative businesses to their state. They’re looking to see how they can recycle a lot of the plastics that right now aren’t.”
As the ACC promotes legislation that recognizes chemical recycling as manufacturing, states are beginning to contemplate extended producer responsibility laws, which require companies to account for the end-of-life environmental costs of their products in an effort to reduce packaging and increase recycling volume. California, Colorado, Maine and Oregon have passed this type of legislation, while a new Maryland law has committed the state to studying the practice. Each of the laws, though, functions differently, and the devil is in the details, advocates said — namely, whether chemical recycling is considered as an effective tool alongside mechanical recycling. The approved rules don’t explicitly contemplate chemical recycling but may leave the door open by failing to prohibit its inclusion.
“Bad [extended producer responsibility] is worse than nothing,” Sharp said, as it would “give legislators and the public the impression that they’ve done something when actually nothing has been done.”
Legislation proposed in New York clearly prohibits chemical recycling from being counted in extended producer responsibility calculations, putting it front and center in the legislative battle, Enck said. She previously described the bill as “the most important environmental bill of the decade.”
Beyond these laws, federal regulations and requirements, global plastic treaty negotiations and community-level opposition will help shape the future of chemical recycling over the coming year, environmental advocates said.
The fight over facilities
With a growing number of states welcoming chemical recycling, Enck said at least 30 additional facilities have been proposed. Most notable among them are plants proposed in eastern Ohio and central Pennsylvania — two states among the 24 that consider chemical recycling as manufacturing — that have both drawn significant pushback.
SOBE Thermal Energy Systems has been planning to build a facility in Youngstown, Ohio, that would process discarded tires, plastic waste and used electronics. But Youngstown City Council established in December a one-year moratorium on pyrolysis and gasification plants, giving the community “time to catch their breath” and better understand the project’s potential impacts, Enck said. It was the first such moratorium passed in the country.
“Bad [extended producer responsibility] is worse than nothing." - Renee Sharp, Safer States
Meanwhile, in Point Township, Pennsylvania, Texas-based Encina hit a snag in its proposal to build a $1.1 billion plant that would operate at an unprecedented scale. Encina is eyeing a location along the Susquehanna River for a facility that would process 450,000 tons of plastic each year — as much as the country’s entire current capacity. But the company, which has faced opposition from environmental advocates and the local group Save Our Susquehanna, withdrew in October a key permit application after the state Department of Environmental Protection deemed portions of its plan “wholly inadequate,” delaying the project.
“Encina has become a model for how communities can raise their voices, speak up and let folks know about the concerns of a project,” Sage Lincoln, a legal fellow with the Clean Air Council, which previously brought a legal challenge to the facility’s development, told EHN. “You’re seeing the results of that in the close look regulators are taking at this project to make sure community concerns are addressed.”
Chemical recycling’s future at the federal level
The plastics industry is also promoting the inclusion of chemical recycling and the purchase of "recycling credits" – akin to carbon offsets – in calculations for a product’s recycled content.
Credit: Vivianne Lemay/Unsplash
At the federal level, the coming year could help dictate the future of chemical recycling, especially with the likelihood of increased rulemaking ahead of a possible administration change. Last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) withdrew a proposal by the Trump administration that relaxed clean-air regulations on chemical recycling facilities, but with so many states now operating with similar policies there may be more federal rulemaking to come. EPA press secretary Remmington Belford said the regulation of such facilities is “complex and based on a variety of legal and technical considerations.”
Environmental advocates are watching two areas in particular: the Federal Trade Commission’s Green Guides and the EPA’s approach to “mass balance,” a method for calculating a product’s recycled content. The Green Guides — the federal standards that govern environmental marketing claims — are due for revision this year, and industry groups, like the American Chemistry Council, have pushed to have them endorse chemical recycling, Blair said.
“Encina has become a model for how communities can raise their voices, speak up and let folks know about the concerns of a project." - Sage Lincoln, a legal fellow with the Clean Air Council
“If it includes language supporting advanced recycling, that will be a big sign of where things are going,” he added.
The plastics industry is also promoting the inclusion of chemical recycling and the purchase of "recycling credits" – akin to carbon offsets – in calculations for a product’s recycled content. Known as “mass balance,” this approach could find its way into both state legislation and federal regulations, Sharp said, putting a spotlight on any rules coming from the EPA.
Asked whether chemical recycling is part of an environmentally sound approach to the plastics crisis, EPA’s Belford said, “many approaches are needed to address the issues that plastics present. There are many concerns with chemical or thermoplastic processes that would need to be addressed.”
Global Plastic Treaty negotiations
The question arising from ongoing Global Plastic Treaty negotiations is whether the treaty will serve as an “enabler” of chemical recycling.
Credit: UNEP/Ahmed Nayim Yussuf
In the background of discussions about U.S. policy, negotiators from around the world are developing a global plastics treaty that would address the ongoing crisis. Chemical recycling hasn’t been addressed directly and is not specifically mentioned in the 70-page draft of the treaty that exists, according to Vito Buonsante, policy lead at the negotiations for IPEN, a network that supports civil society organizations in low- and middle-income countries. Nonetheless, he told EHN, “chemical recycling is always present there.”
The question arising from negotiations is whether the treaty will serve as an “enabler” of chemical recycling, Buonsante said, by considering it alongside mechanical recycling in extended producer responsibility and recycled content policies. The final treaty, which Buonsante said is unlikely to be ready by early 2025 (as planned), could define what is considered “environmentally-sound management” for plastics. If it does, that could open the door for the inclusion of chemical recycling, but agreement on the issue has been hard to come by. A spokesperson for the ACC said last year’s Basel Convention on hazardous waste left open a section of guidelines on chemical recycling because the parties couldn’t reach consensus.
"Many approaches are needed to address the issues that plastics present. There are many concerns with chemical or thermoplastic processes that would need to be addressed." - Remmington Belford, EPA
Environmental advocates said the U.S. hasn’t been ambitious enough at global treaty negotiations. Belford, the EPA spokesperson, said the U.S. approach to the treaty is “to be as ambitious as possible to protect human health and the environment. As a general matter, the U.S. also endeavors to align international goals with our domestic approaches to ensure that our commitments are implementable.”
The next session of negotiations is set to be held in Ottawa in late April.
Sharp said she and other environmental advocates are encouraged by a growing pushback against chemical recycling at the state level and by the emergence of legislative support at the federal level. As those domestic battles continue, the global negotiations could set the tone for the regulation of chemical recycling in the U.S. and beyond.
“We see this as an opportunity for the Biden administration to show their leadership on climate and the environment,” Sharp said. “We have seen some shifts in their positions toward a more pro-environment position and we’re hopeful we’ll see more.”
Credit: Unsplash+
What is chemical recycling?
But industry players and proponents are now pushing for “chemical recycling”, claiming it could be an effective way to keep plastic waste out of landfills and oceans.
Here’s everything you know to know about the practice.
What is chemical recycling?
Chemical recycling is a set of technological processes that have been around for decades. There are three broad methods used in chemical recycling:
- Conversion: Extreme heat helps convert plastic waste into either a synthetic crude oil via pyrolysis, or synthetic gas via gasification. Most chemical recycling facilities use this method.
- Decomposition: Heat or chemicals break plastic polymers into their smallest parts.
- Purification: Strong solvents separate plastic polymers from contaminants.
The crude oil — also called syngas — created from conversion can be refined into diesel fuel, gasoline and other products. When polymers are broken down and collected, they can theoretically be used to create new plastic products.
Why is chemical recycling controversial?
When polymers are broken down and collected, they can theoretically be used to create new plastic products. Above: Pure PET monomer, the most commonly used plastic polymer in the world, left, made from mixed/dirty post-consumer waste, right.
Credit: IBM Research/flickr
“Chemical recycling is really an industry ploy to convince the public and policymakers that we don't have to reduce plastic production in order to deal with plastic waste,” Jennifer Congdon, deputy director of the environmental advocacy group Beyond Plastics, told Environmental Health News (EHN).
The phrase “chemical recycling” suggests that these processes can result in new plastic products made from old plastic. But most of the plastic waste that goes through chemical recycling fails to become anything usable, Congdon said. In a 2023 report, Beyond Plastics, in collaboration with the International Pollutants Elimination Network, wrote that when using pyrolysis, only 20 to 30 percent of plastic waste input becomes extractable polymers. This means that “up to 80 percent of the plastic waste going in for recycling is actually lost as process fuel, emissions or becomes hazardous waste,” the report says.
Another report from the Natural Resources Defense Council calls chemical recycling the plastic industry’s attempt at “greenwashing incineration.” Burning synthetic oil or syngas that come out of chemical recycling is essentially just another, complicated way to burn fossil fuels. Chemical recycling processes are energy-intensive, emit greenhouse gasses and toxic pollutants, but “offers none of the ecological or economic benefits of true recycling,” the report says.
“The thinking that we can continue to use plastics at the rate that we're using them, and then deal with the waste by turning it into fuel and then burning it, is really collective madness,” said Congdon. “This stuff is so dirty and so toxic. It's not a solution.”
What are the pollution concerns and health risks from chemical recycling?
The pollution and health concerns that come with chemical recycling are essentially the same as those that come with plastic production. Chemical recycling facilities also emit toxic pollutants like benzene, toluene, dioxins, heavy metals and PFAS—all of which have been linked to serious health concerns like cancer, hormonal disruption and reproductive and developmental damage. Subproducts of plastic recycling, like plastics-based jet fuel, have also been linked to cancer in as many as one in every four people with a lifetime exposure, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
The plants also produce non-trivial volumes of hazardous or corrosive waste.
The Beyond Plastics report states that in 2019, a chemical recycling plant in Oregon sent data to the EPA showing that it incinerated 283 tons of hazardous waste. This same facility produces one ton of hazardous waste for every three tons of plastic waste that they process.
When you factor all this together, it’s actually safer for the environment to landfill plastics than it is to chemically recycle them, Congdon said. So despite the enormous and unwieldy amounts of plastic waste out there (and more being generated all the time) chemical recycling is not the answer. “We really have to focus on reduction strategies” and lower the amount of plastic being produced, she said.
Who is most at risk from chemical recycling pollution?
As of September 2023, there are 11 chemical recycling facilities in the United States, according to the 2023 Beyond Plastics report. Oregon, Nevada, New Hampshire, Indiana, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia each have one chemical recycling plant. Texas and Ohio have two each.
Chemical recycling facilities in the U.S., like other plastics plants, are mostly located in low income communities and communities of color, said Congdon. “This is absolutely an environmental justice concern.”
In their 2023 report, Beyond Plastics analyzed the five-mile ring of land around 11 chemical recycling plants. They found that “eight of the plants are located in areas with lower-than-average levels of income, compared to the national average; and five have higher-than-average concentrations of people of color than the rest of the country.”
Interestingly, many of the factories “are not operating or not operating at capacity,” Congdon said. Even so, “the industry is looking to build more of them.” But even if they were operating at full capacity, these facilities would be processing a very small percentage of our annually produced plastic waste, while generating a lot of hazardous waste, she added.
What does industry say about chemical recycling?
BASF employee with a bottle of pyrolysis oil recovered from plastic waste.
Credit: BASF - We create chemistry/flickr
Proponents of chemical recycling point to the possibility of a more “circular economy”, describing a world where more and more plastic waste is funneled continually into new products.
Industry leaders say the practice will help fix the problem of plastic waste — most of which cannot be recycled mechanically.
But while the industry tries to frame chemical recycling as a way to extend the life of plastics, “we reject that and do not believe it is a tool that should be in any proverbial toolbox,” Daniel Rosenberg, senior attorney and director of federal toxics policy at NRDC, told EHN.
“The American Chemistry Council has also been working to get chemical recycling reclassified as manufacturing instead of as waste processing” on a federal level, Congdon said. This move would weaken the scrutiny for its hazardous emissions and waste.
Its recent petition to the EPA for this reclassification got rejected, she added—rightly so, since these facilities often can’t prove that they’re actually creating a valuable product for the market. But had that petition been successful, the plastics industry would suddenly be eligible for a number of subsidies and incentives that could have led to a surge of chemical recycling.
What chemical recycling regulations exist in the US?
The EPA ruled last year that chemical recycling processes need to be regulated under the Clean Air Act. However, prior to that ruling, 24 states have already passed individual laws reclassifying chemical recycling processes as manufacturing. What remains to be seen is whether the EPA will step in and tell those states that they must regulate chemical recycling as waste processing as part of a national standard, Congdon said.
The ability for industry players to go full steam on chemical recycling depends on them being able to get out from under federal pollution controls, Rosenberg said. This includes “monitoring their emissions, reporting their emissions, limiting their emissions, restrictions on how they dispose of waste.” All of this should be seen as evidence that “these proposals are not actually good for public health or the environment, particularly for environmental justice communities.”
Several lawmakers do seem to recognize and understand the pitfalls of the practice. In July of 2023, the U.S. House Appropriations Committee wrote in a report that it “encourages” the EPA to maintain regulating chemical recycling technologies as municipal waste combustion units under the Clean Air Act.What role will chemical recycling have in the Global Plastics Treaty?
The Global Plastics Treaty is part of a resolution by the United Nations Environment Programme to develop an international and legally-binding agreement to end plastic pollution. Ideally, the treaty would force plastic manufacturers to address the full life cycle of plastic, from its production to its disposal. The next session will be held in Ottawa in April.
Some experts fear that chemical recycling ends up being incentivized in the treaty. A coalition of Saudi Arabia, Russia, Iran, Cuba, China and Bahrain are pushing to focus on plastic waste rather than production limits. But promoting chemical recycling “would be the worst outcome the Treaty could endorse for managing plastic waste,” wrote 20 scientists in November of 2023.
Many unknowns remain regarding the stance the U.S. government will take in global negotiations about plastics, Rosenberg says. Whether we’ll start to see plastic production caps, for example, is still up in the air. Groups like NRDC are also looking to see whether the EPA will roll back its prior approvals for some toxic chemicals derived from plastic waste as per the Toxic Substances Control Act. All of this is consequential for how chemical recycling will be regulated in the U.S.
None of these are currently set in stone, said Rosenberg, but it will be significant to see what position the U.S. takes.
Where can I learn more about chemical recycling?
The opening press conference for the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee meeting on the global plastic treaty held in Nairobi, Kenya in 2023.
Credit: UNEP
Various organizations have a number of reports and fact-sheets where you can learn more about chemical recycling.
- In addition to their 2023 report in collaboration with IPEN, Beyond Plastics has a fact-sheet breaking down the pitfalls of chemical recycling.
- NRDC has an introduction to chemical recycling, as well as a longer breakdown of its harms to the environment.
- U.S. Public Interest Research Groups has published an explainer from Beyond Plastics on the basics of chemical recycling.
- The Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives conducted a large investigation on chemical recycling, which they published in this 2020 report.
- Greenpeace published a 2020 analysis on why claims about chemical recycling as an economic good fail to hold up to scrutiny.
And follow Environmental Health News’ continuing coverage of chemical recycling and plastics here:
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