Backers Acknowledge Chemical Recycling Technology Needs Improvement
In a rare public debate with environmentalists, supporters of controversial chemical recycling processes conceded the most prominent of the technologies -- which the plastics industry has touted as a solution to the growing plastic pollution crisis -- must be improved to become more viable for large-scale recycling.
In an Aug. 27 webinar held by the Environmental Law Institute, titled “Chemical Recycling: More Pollution? Or a Sustainability Solution for Plastic?”, chemical industry representatives and pro-chemical recycling researchers expressed optimism that the technologies, including pyrolysis and gasification, would improve, despite environmentalists’ claims that the most prominent recycling method yields very low levels of new plastic.
Ross Eisenberg, president of America’s Plastic Makers at the American Chemistry Council, compared the technology to “the battery range on the first electric car,” arguing that “incremental progress” will come with further research and investment. Eisenberg has testified before Congress about the need to clear regulatory roadblocks to proliferation of chemical recycling facilities.
“We aren’t talking about the first electric car, we’re talking about 50 years down the line from the first ‘electric car,’ and still [there’s] a failure to scale up these technologies,” responded Davis Allen, senior investigative researcher at the Center for Climate Integrity.
The concession comes as the chemical industry and their GOP allies are touting the technologies as improved, “advanced” recycling methods that can make up for some of the shortcomings of traditional, “mechanical” recycling. Environmentalists say the only way to reliably reduce pollution is to reduce production; chemical recycling fails to meaningfully recycle plastic; and toxic emissions from chemical recycling facilities harm fenceline communities.
In a July hearing, House Republicans endorsed industry calls for EPA to ease their regulations on the technologies, while Democrats argued deregulation would greenlight an unproven and controversial technology and damage public health.
The conflict is playing out amid ongoing negotiations for a global plastic pollution treaty, with oil-producing nations emphasizing improved recycling while other countries advocate for production limits.
“Chemical recycling” refers to a wide array of technologies meant to recycle hard-to-process plastics. The most common of these is pyrolysis, which uses heat to separate plastics into their chemical constituents -- some of which can be remade into plastics, while others become fuel oil.
Pyrolysis makes up about 80 percent of existing or proposed chemical recycling facilities in the United States, according to an analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Oil and Gas Watch.
‘Kind Of A Joke’
Renee Sharp, director of plastics and petrochemical advocacy at NRDC, said that while yields “vary dramatically across technologies,” pyrolysis yields specifically “are so incredibly low that it’s kind of a joke,” citing a 2023 study by researchers from the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
That study said the “economic and environmental metrics of pyrolysis and gasification [another prominent chemical recycling technology] are currently 10-100 times higher than virgin polymers.”
“In other words, it would be cheaper and more environmentally preferable to make plastic from virgin fossil fuels,” Sharp said, adding that the fuels produced from the process can be “astoundingly” toxic and carcinogenic, citing EPA researchers’ findings.
And Allen pointed to subpoenaed documents in California’s suit against ExxonMobil accusing the oil giant of deceptive practices around recycling that “provide a really damning picture of this issue and show that Exxon is getting such minimal material, and such low-quality material [from pyrolysis], that they’re replacing virgin plastic inputs at a rate that is basically entirely negligible.”
“I’m sure that there are processes, especially at a lab scale, that can achieve a higher rate than that, but those figures are probably the best information that we have about what real-world processes are looking like.”
He added that ExxonMobil is “the company that is probably held up as the example of a leader in advanced recycling by the industry itself, more than any other.”
But backers of chemical recycling disputed the claims of low yields and cautioned against generalizations.
Chemical recycling is a “broad suite of technologies,” and even pyrolysis can see “extensive variation” depending on various factors, said Rachel Meidl, a fellow at Rice University’s Center for Energy Studies. “To talk about it as if it’s one broad category where you have one input and one output and then the exact same impacts, same system economics, that is erroneous.”
Additionally, “innovations don’t emerge fully optimized, it’s an evolution through research, through development, through iterative improvements,” Meidl added. “Every transformative technology through time . . . follows that same trajectory of development and refinement and optimization before it reaches that potential.”
Eisenberg said pyrolysis facilities that are members of his group “are reporting yields [of] 70, 80, 90 percent.”
“I have no way of verifying that, I’m not the company,” he added.
And Sandeep Bangaru, vice president of circular economy platforms at Eastman Chemical Company, claimed his company’s facility sees “a 90 percent yield to new materials” and that chemical recycling is “absolutely” replacing virgin plastic.
Meidl added that chemical recycling may need to be fully integrated into the waste processing system before its full value can be realized. “Without that coordination, even the most technically advanced processes are going to risk falling short of commercial environmental expectations,” she said.