By Al Hodge
What the chemical and plastics industry calls “advanced recycling” is actually an old technology–pyrolysis–and it is simply consumer greenwashing at its best. This method requires plastics to be incinerated/burned without oxygen at elevated temperatures (800–1,500°F) to produce a primary product. In fact, only 20% of plastics burned result in a usable product: a low sulfur diesel fuel or liquid, flammable and toxic product called naphtha. Naphtha can be utilized in the production of certain plastics. The other 80% of input plastics are actually burned, along with the addition of natural gas, as fuel for the pyrolysis process itself.
Under federal law, pyrolysis and related technologies are regulated as incinerators. As a favor to the plastics industry, President Trump’s administration initiated a process to remove those regulations. Unfortunately, in December 2022, the Michigan legislature deregulated pyrolysis, after Dow Chemical and The American Chemistry Council succeeded in getting a lame-duck amendment to allow it in the Bill Package. Let the toxins emit!
Enough studies already exist to indicate pyrolysis incineration sites yield negative environmental impacts as a result of toxic chemical emissions. These toxic emissions include dioxins and endocrine disruptors from the additives used to make and process plastics. Endocrine disruptors are hormone-mimicking chemicals that can cause reproductive and development issues with fetuses. Facilities using these processes are often located in communities that are disproportionally low income, have higher percentages of people of color, or both. We shouldn't build plants that create such toxins, and communities that are already overburdened with pollution should not be subjected to more.
The U.S. is forecast to produce 22 million tons of single-use plastic plastic products in 2023. In contrast, the largest pyrolysis plant in the U.S. is currently being commissioned in northern Indiana at a cost of $260 million will only have a capacity of 100,000 tons of plastics per year. A bit of math yields that 220 pyrolysis plants will be needed to process all of the county's single-use plastics and they will cost $56 billion just to build. That's an unrealistic plan.
Pyrolysis is not “advanced recycling” but advanced pollution.
The WZWC believes that our current plastic pollution debacle is best addressed through major reductions in plastic production by industry, personal conservation (use less plastic bottles, no plastic bags and recycle properly) and through mechanical recycling processes, not through the utilization of pyrolysis.