For years, the plastics industry’s recycling stories have fallen apart. the study and media investigation It made no economic sense, revealing that petrochemical companies are using it as a public relations gambit rather than serious efforts to mitigate the plastic pollution crisis. Traditional recycling is being processed Only 9% of global plastic wasteleave the rest infill, burn, or scattered.
Rather than reducing the production of plastics made from fossil fuels, many companies are beginning to promote “advanced recycling,” also known as “chemical recycling,” a more effective solution. These terms refer to several different processes that use heat and pressure to divide plastic into chemical building blocks. These building blocks could theoretically be reverted to new plastic products.
According to plastics and fossil fuel companies, advanced recycling is newBreakthrough“Innovation that enablesCirculation economyFor plastics by making materials infinitely recyclable. It can process consumer plastic after mixing, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts. “Advanced recycling technology allows us to recycle plastics more than ever.” I put it down.
However, some plastics industry groups in internal communications and expert analysis and statements of these companies draw unoptimistic pictures provided to trade publications. Chemical recycling processes are more expensive and technically challenging for industry advertising than it looks. a New Report The Climate Integrity Center, a nonprofit center, highlights the contradictions between the public and private statements of fossil fuels and plastics companies, suggesting that they have deliberately sold off the effectiveness of chemical recycling.
“They claim that’s the solution and not, and they know that,” said Davis Allen, a senior research researcher at the author of the Centre for Climate Integrity and the Report.
Allen’s report follows the research he published last year.Plastic recycling fraudIt focused primarily on traditional methods known as mechanical recycling. The new report begins with the idea that it is novel, in order to refute industry claims about chemical recycling from published documents.brand new” and “InnovativeTo explain chemical recycling, the technologies it encompasses are First patented 70 years ago. In an early wave of excitement, industry groups in the 1970s promoted one technique called pyrolysis as a “more logical approach” to dealing with plastic waste compared to traditional recycling.
After a brief revival in the late 1980s and early 90s, this enthusiasm was prominent by the end of the century, as several chemical recycling ventures were abandoned. According to the report, one Exxon chemical employee told staff at an industry conference in 1994 that pyrolysis was a “fundamental non-economic process.”
Petrochemical companies have known for 40 years that plastic recycling will not work
By around 2016, amid an explosion of public awareness about plastic pollution, industry groups had once again begun to hypnosis of chemical recycling. For example, Chevron Phillips Chemical is advertised to be produced in 2023. 1 billion pounds of polyethylene resin It is made from chemically recycled materials each year by 2030.
But, like decades ago, public hype for businesses hides internal doubts about the possibility of expanding chemical recycling. This report cites analyses from consulting companies (some analyses commissioned by the Plastic Industry Group or presented at industry conferences). Chemical recycling isCurrently not economically viable” and Not suitable for 2025 sustainability goals. In 2023, Bain & Company warned the industry that chemical recycling should not be relied on to achieve its 2030 sustainability goals.Not available on a large scale by the end of the decade. “Industry organizations like the Flexible Packaging Association I said it in 2020 The recycling of that chemical “will not be a major factor in recycling until 2040.”
In a particularly harsh phrase of the gap between marketing and reality, ExxonMobil admitted earlier this year that it had only been dealt with since it began operations three years ago. 70 million pounds of plastic waste At a chemical recycling facility in Baytown, Texas. That is, for three years, the company only handled 7%. 1 billion pounds Previously, it said it could be processed annually by the end of 2026.
Chemical recycling claims that it can handle items that are “hard to recycle and not suitable for mechanical methods,” Potato chip bag, motor oil bottleand diapers, insiders acknowledge a more complicated situation: mixed plastic Introduce pollutants That leads to Lower yield, lower quality productsand additional costs, according to recent reports from industry groups, including the Sustainable Packaging Coalition and the Alliance to End Plastic Waste. In 2021, the president of the Trade Group was the Plastic Recycling Association He told the plastic news Plastics that are actually treated with chemically recycled plants “is not something that has not been left out in the consumer world, but are essentially derived from the internal post-industrial plant waste.”
An internal document from Exxon Mobil, discovered in a landmark lawsuit filed last fall by the California Attorney General’s Office, shows the company internally acknowledges that “not all post-use plastics are suitable for chemical recycling.”
Sergio Flores/AFP via Getty Images
Finally, the report states that chemical recycling isEnablerCirculatory or it can be doneGenerates a completely circular output” includes comments from analysts and industry groups. Only a small portion of plastics processed through chemical recycling technology In fact, it can be returned to plastic – The rest is almost turned to fuel, and it isClosing the plastic loop is uselessJust like consulting firm Roland Berger included in his 2022 report. Employees of chemical company BASF are 2022 Interview with DW Recycling that chemical doesn’t create a “100% closed loop” because “you always need some fossil resources.”
Grist contacted 11 industry groups and nine petrochemical companies mentioned in the report. The American Chemistry Council and Plastics Industry Association criticized the report as the work of a group of “activists” and said it misrepresented advances in chemical recycling technology. The Plastics Industry Association said the “fiction writers” at the Climate Integrity Center should consider one of the public relations campaigns that show videos of people working in chemical recycling facilities. American fuel and petrochemical manufacturers said that while chemical recycling is required to manage the growing demand for plastic products, it is only part of their strategy, along with better product designs to optimize mechanical recycling, improve waste management and collection, optimize recyclability and maximize reuse. Two industry groups – the Association of Plastic Recyclers and the Association of Flexible Packaging declined to comment.
Eastman Chemical did not directly address any of the claims made in the report, but said that Tennessee chemical recycling facilities can process more than 240 million pounds of polyester per year. The company said it has invested more than $1 billion in its second Texas facility to invest chemical recycling “in the coming years.” Exxon Mobil said chemical recycling technology “makes sense” and that it has invested more than $200 million to expand in the US and Europe. The other six companies did not respond, and Lyon del Beisel introduced Grist to the American Council of Chemistry.
Only the National Recycling Coalition appeared to agree to the Center for Climate Integrity report, at least in part. Charles Kamenides, executive director of the organization, said the process of converting plastics into fuel, gas, oil or wax does not meet the definition of recycling. Chemical recycling facilities engaged in these processes said, “Don’t reduce plastic pollution” and “Don’t harm humans.” He said his organization “supports a hierarchy of waste management preferences that prioritizes reducing plastic production and consumption.”
Andrew Rolinson, an independent chemical engineering consultant with no connection to the Climate Integrity Center, agreed to the entire report. Chemical recycling “It’s certainly a scam,” he said. “We haven’t been anywhere in 50 years, we’ve not gone anywhere within another 50 years, we’ve not gone anywhere within 500 years,” he said the tracking report could embody some of the technical reasons for these poor outlooks, like what the tracking report called the very high energy use and troublesome pollution issues of chemical recycling.
Allen said he hopes the report will become a resource for organizations taking legal action against fossil fuel and plastics companies. Many lawsuits have already been filed, including the California lawsuit against Exxon Mobil, but so far, most have focused on disingenuous promotion of plastic pollution and mechanical recycling in the industry.
“The majority of the information on advanced recycling is produced by the industry itself,” Allen said. “We hope that when we get zero to certain claims that are being made, this provides a context to help us understand whether those claims are true or not.”
