Real help for plastic mess?
Form of recycling uses heat or chemical solvents to break down material into liquid, gas
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The plastics industry says there is a way to help solve the crisis of plastic waste plaguing the planet’s oceans, beaches and lands: recycle it, chemically.
Chemical recycling typically uses heat or chemical solvents to break down plastics into liquid and gas to produce an oil-like mixture or basic chemicals. Industry leaders say that mixture can be made back into plastic pellets to make new products.
The goal is to create a circular economy for plastics, according to the American Chemistry Council, the industry trade association for American chemical companies.
Companies are planning to build large plastics recycling plants and seven smaller facilities across the United States already recycle plastic into new plastic, according to the ACC. A handful of others turn plastic into transportation fuels.
But environmental groups say advanced recycling is a distraction from real solutions like producing and using less plastic. They suspect the gloss of recycling will enable a continued steep ramp up in global plastics production. Recycling rates for plastic waste are abysmally low, especially in the United States. Packaging, multilayered films, bags, polystyrene foam and other hard-to-recycle plastic products are piling up in landfills and in the environment.
Judith Enck, the founder and president of Beyond Plastics, says plastics recycling does not work and never will. Chemical additives and colorants used to give plastic different properties mean there are thousands of types, she said. That’s why they can’t be mixed all together and recycled in the conventional, mechanical way. Nor is there much of a market for recycled plastic, because virgin plastic is cheap, she said.
So what is more likely to happen than recycling, said Enck, a former regional administrator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, is the industry will shift to burning plastics as waste or as fuel.
The industry has made 11 billion metric tons of plastic since 1950, with half of that produced since 2006, according to industrial ecologist Roland Geyer. Global plastic production is expected to more than quadruple by 2050, according to the United Nations Environment Programme and GRID-Arendal in Norway.
The international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development says the share of plastic waste that is successfully recycled is projected to rise to 17% in 2060 from 9% in 2019 if no additional policies are enacted to restrain plastic demand and enhance recycling, but that wouldn’t begin to keep up with the projected growth in plastic waste. With more ambitious policies, the amount of plastic waste that is recycled could rise to 40% to 60%, according to the OECD.
Alterra Energy in Akron, Ohio says it takes in the hard-to-recycle plastics, typically 40 tons to 50 tons per day, heating and liquifying the plastic to turn it back into an oil or hydrocarbon liquid, about 10,000 gallons to 12,000 gallons daily.
“Our mission is to solve plastic pollution,” said Jeremy DeBenedictis, the company’s president.
The process doesn’t involve oxygen so there’s no combustion or incineration of plastics, DeBenedictis said, and the product is trucked as a synthetic oil to petrochemical companies, the “building blocks on a molecular level for new plastic production.”