Chemical recycling won’t solve our plastics problem
Judith Enck | July 2, 2021 | Buffalo News
Although Brightmark CEO and Founder Bob Powell’s June 28 “Another Voice” frames New York’s sustainable economic future as dependent on a technology called “chemical recycling,” nothing could be further from the truth.
In the 1980s, petrochemical industries spent lots of money on a major public relations campaign to convince Americans that plastics are recyclable. But they are not. Four decades later, it is clear that plastics recycling has failed.
Less than 10% of the nearly 10 billion tons of plastic produced since 1950 has been recycled – and even that was actually “downcycled.” Most plastic ends up in landfills, incinerators, rivers and oceans, or shipped to developing countries in Asia and Africa where it causes immense problems. Plastics recycling is a myth, but chemical recycling of plastics is even worse.
Petrochemical companies are trying to sell recycling again, this time, as “advanced” or “chemical” recycling, a process that theoretically breaks plastic into its molecular components using high heat and solvents, unlike mechanical recycling, which shreds plastic into small pieces.
The industry claims that this technological approach enables the true recycling of plastics back into the same kind of plastics. Unfortunately, despite the industry fanfare, chemical recycling is not a viable technology.
Brightmark, a chemical recycler, turns plastic waste into fuel, rather than new plastics. Of the 37 chemical recycling projects announced in the U.S. since 2000, just three are operating, and none of them convert plastic waste to new plastics on an industrial scale. Instead, these facilities turn the discarded plastic into another form of fossil fuel, which speeds global warming.
Turning plastic into fuel is counterproductive to effectively addressing climate change. Processing just one ton of plastic waste produces three tons of greenhouse gas emissions. The many chemical additives in plastic also contribute to its toxicity when burned as a fuel.
In the past six months, petrochemical industry lobbyists have been aggressively pushing chemical recycling bills through state legislatures and lobbying the federal government for funding. While paying lip service to “sustainability,” the petrochemical industry expects virgin plastic production to quadruple by 2050. Much of the plastics produced here in the U.S. are intended to flood overseas markets, worsening global pollution.
New York cannot afford to fall for the myth of chemical or advanced recycling and further entrench itself in the fossil fuel economy that is imperiling the natural world.