Groups Rally Against Chemical Recycling in New Mexico
Marissa Heffernan | January 31, 2023 | Resource Recycling, Inc.
Over 70 organizations and businesses signed a letter to New Mexico’s governor last week, asking her not to classify chemical recycling as recycling.
Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a democrat, attended the opening of a PlastikGas demonstration facility in Los Lunas, N.M. last year, which is driving the letter writers’ concerns.
The terms “chemical recycling” and “advanced recycling” generally refer to a wide array of processes that use heat, pressure and solvents to break down the molecular chains of polymers into liquids or gasses that can then be processed into fuels, oils, waxes, new plastics or other chemical products.
So far, 21 states have passed laws classifying chemical recycling as manufacturing rather than waste disposal, changing the emissions laws the processes are subject to.
The 78 organizations and businesses submitted a letter “urging the Governor to champion policies that will reduce plastic waste at the source and protect our families from reckless and unchecked sources of pollution.”
Ana Rios, New Mexico field organizer for Moms Clean Air Force, said in a press release that communities “already overburdened by toxic air pollution and environmental injustice are the very ones who will be subjected to the additional harms” from the facilities.
Alexis Goldsmith, organizing director for Beyond Plastic, called pyrolysis, gasification and solvolysis “false recycling.” Sarah Pierpont, executive director of the New Mexico Recycling Coalition called them “false solutions.”
