The world is drowning in plastic pollution. But in the U.S., only a small percentage of plastic, just 5% or 6%, is recycled. Much of that is done through mechanical recycling, where post-consumer plastic waste is collected and shredded, or ground down to make new products.
Enter chemical recycling, or what the industry calls advanced recycling. There are different methods, like pyrolysis and gasification, but basically, high heat or chemicals break down plastic to the molecular level so it can be made into more plastic or other materials.
A new report from the Ohio River Valley Institute concludes that chemical recycling is not a sustainable new industry for the region looking to rebuild from the fall of other industries and economic stagnation.
The Allegheny Front’s Kara Holsopple spoke with Kathy Hipple, a finance professor and one of the authors of the report called “Chemical Recycling: A False Promise for the Ohio River Valley.”
Kara Holsopple: Why does the report call chemical recycling a false solution to the plastic pollution problem? Why do you say it’s really not recycling at all?
Kathy Hipple: Even the most robust reports by industry suggest, even at the most optimistic growth projections, it really will not begin to make a dent in the plastic pollution problem. At most, it could recycle less than 1% of the plastic pollution, and in fact, it shouldn’t be called recycling. The definition of recycling is taking a product, breaking it down, and producing more of that same product. In this case, most chemical recycling produces fuel, and it does not create more plastic. Ten to 15% ends up being converted into some kind of plastic, while 80% to 85% goes into making fuel, which is not recycling.
What are some of the economic arguments against chemical recycling plants?
In short, the business case for chemical recycling has never been proved. There are only ten chemical recycling plants operating so far in the country, and none of the many that had been out there have ever been produced at scale or profitably. So you got a lot of false promises that we could recycle up to this amount, and we could do this. Then, you see these plants getting closed. There was a recent one in Oregon that was closed, and they said we achieved all of our goals. The two joint venture partners decided it was not economically profitable, and they closed it.
If the chemical recycling industry is still kind of immature and the technology is unproven, why not let it develop and see if it can eventually help recycle and reduce all this plastic that we’re drowning in?
That is the argument that the fossil fuel or petrochemical industry has used and is continuing to use. But let’s take a step back and look at the petrochemical fossil fuel industry. Why have they advocated so hard for recycling? One is the demand for transport fuel. That’s what fuels our cars, our boats, our trains will inevitably decline.
Is that because of renewables?
Renewables, electric vehicles, something like 20% of all vehicles sold this year will be electric vehicles. So, what is their next growth industry? They would like to keep making virgin plastics. They’re seeing petrochemicals as their new growth propeller. And so how can they continue to produce new plastic is [that] they can tell the world don’t worry, we can always recycle plastic. Yet the Center for Climate Integrity has done some research and said big oil and the plastics industry have deceived the public for decades, knowing that plastic cannot really be recycled. And this has allowed the oil and gas companies and the petrochemical companies to continue to produce ever more plastic.
What are the alternatives if chemical recycling is not the answer to plastic pollution or jobs in this region?
We are going to do a future report on many alternatives. The Ohio River Valley Institute has published a couple. One is a roadmap for industrial decarbonization. It was commissioned by ORVI to describe how the region could benefit from a growing trend worldwide to decarbonize.
So in Pennsylvania, the industrial sector has been a central economic driver. And when you look at sort of the industrial sector, sometimes people only look at high tech as an opportunity. But what this report tried to do was to look at the industrial sector, saying Pennsylvania has been key to that. So they should still produce good steel, cement, glass, etc., and that you would build on this manufacturing base. And as the world starts to decarbonize, take advantage of that.
So, the industrial decarbonization roadmap was conducted through 2050, and it had many pathways that address emissions from the industrial subsectors, including fossil fuel extraction and delivery, iron and steel, minerals, chemicals, and refining. And looked at how has the need to reduce emissions from these sectors, how that could be done through this roadmap in a way that creates jobs
We also, I and my coauthors, this report, Jacqueline Ebner and Irina Spector, worked on a report. And Nick Messager at ORVI, all four of us, worked on a report on green steel. It is a nearly carbon-free production of steel. There’s only one green steel facility so far in the United States. And it is just getting started. It’s going to be down south, but this region could really benefit. It could create many, many jobs, as we described in our report. And it could help create a hub that is run on renewable energy and could create a hub for the steel industry. And it would be a forward-looking industry as opposed to looking backward.
Who are you hoping to reach with this chemical recycling report?
One of the things that we discovered is that when some of the facilities have not gone forward, or there’s been a one-year moratorium on a facility – in Youngstown, Ohio, they’ve put a one-year moratorium, and the Encina facility that was going to be launched in Pennsylvania. It was people, local citizens, who learned more and more. And they probably heard the industry hype about thousands of jobs in the construction phase, hundreds of permanent jobs, and economic benefits in the billions. And they looked past that. And they said, well, what are the immediate health challenges? What happened to our workers that go into this? What could go wrong? And as they learned more and more and more, they started to ask questions and protest this. And in their protest, in some cases, the city council or the company itself decided not to go forward.
So we are hoping to just have people invite industries into their communities with their eyes wide open and say, is this the best path forward for our community? So we’re looking at policymakers. I think, before a plant goes forward or before something comes in that could last for 20, 30, or 40 years, the community has to have full knowledge about what’s involved. And as we’re discovering, very few of the chemicals of concern in the plastics industry have ever been fully explored. There are 16,000 in the chemical industry. And, fewer than a thousand are regulated. And without full knowledge of what this does to the environment, human health, to animal health. It’s scary to think of having this in your community.
Response from the plastics industry
Ross Eisenberg, president of America’s Plastic Makers®, a division of the American Chemistry Council, said, “Products created through advanced recycling which are sold as fuel should not be considered “recycled,” even when the conversion processes are similar. The recent report from the Ohio [River] Valley Institute lists several companies that are waste-to-fuel facilities, which would not qualify as recyclers.”
In response to the report’s conclusion that chemical recycling is an unproven technology, Eisenberg said, “Business analysts across a wide variety of industries suggest it typically takes a couple of decades for technologies to scale and come to market in an effective way, and we’re experiencing that now with chemical recycling facilities using technologies such as pyrolysis and methanolysis in the United States. There are, however, examples of these technologies already working at scale, helping keep plastics out of landfills and in use.”
Chemical recycling technologies, he said, are continuing to evolve, such as smartphones, solar panels and electric vehicles. Eisenberg said there is a growing market, as hundreds of companies are committed to using more of this kind of recycled plastic.
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