Industry's Big Bet on Chemical Recycling Is Sparking Policy Fights across the Country

by Jordan Wolman (Politico) ... At Alterra Energy, trucks drop off shredded plastic from recycling centers across the Midwest. That plastic is heated to temperatures between 800 and 1,100 degrees Fahrenheit to break it down. The end product, 200 to 300 barrels per day of synthetic crude oil, is transported down to major petrochemical companies in Louisiana and Texas to be remade into plastic after it’s purified.

For Jeremy DeBenedictis, Alterra’s president and an Ohio native, the technology, known as pyrolysis, is personal. He said he knew he “wanted to do something with sustainability” after visiting landfills and recycling centers while looking to kick-start an entrepreneurial career, and he takes pride in imparting to his family the importance of recycling.

Environmental groups see the technology much differently. They argue that toxic chemicals like benzene, mercury and arsenic that are released during pyrolysis should be more strictly regulated. They also dispute that the process generates meaningful amounts of reusable material.

The result is a split between red and blue states in which Republican-led legislatures are embracing chemical recycling while Democratic-run governments have been slower to act. Plastic and oil industry groups are hoping to push the issue in Congress next year, while environmental groups are pressing EPA to regulate the technology.

Ohio is one of 20 states — all but one of them with majority-Republican legislatures — that have adopted laws since 2017 to enable chemical recycling. Only eight facilities are in operation nationwide, but the American Chemistry Council, an industry group that represents Dow, Chevron and Exxon, envisions 150 plants around the country.

The debate also has implications for the climate. Plastics are derived from natural gas and crude oil; they account for 14 percent of annual global oil demand, and are expected to drive nearly half of oil demand growth between now and 2050, according to the International Energy Agency.

Oil companies are among those investing in chemical recycling: ExxonMobil has a pilot plant in Bayview, Texas — the first of 13 facilities worldwide that it plans to bring online by the end of 2026, with a combined capacity of recycling more than 1 billion pounds of plastic per year.

Alterra is competing for several bids to license its technology at industry-owned projects around the world, and has already been awarded two licensing bids in Europe and one near the U.S. Gulf Coast.

Former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who now serves as a U.N. climate envoy, launched an $85 million campaign earlier this year to block more than 120 petrochemical facilities, including chemical recycling plants, proposed in Louisiana, Texas and the Ohio River Valley.

The primary battle has been over permitting. Industry groups are lobbying to get states and Congress to classify chemical recycling plants as manufacturing facilities. Environmental groups are contending that they should be considered waste management operations, which they argue should subject them to tighter emissions limits under the Clean Air Act. READ MORE

Excerpt from Circular Biobased Delta: Chemical recycling involves turning mixed streams containing both biomass and waste plastics into new raw materials for the chemical and plastics industry. The switch to circular raw materials entails changes throughout the chain. National and European legislation, which traditionally focuses on clearly distinguishable sectors such as waste and chemistry, will also have to be amended. Collaboration is key. Not only within the chain, but also across the boundaries of sectors, regions and even countries.

Shell

Chemical recycling is about a global market, Paul de Hoog of Shell also emphasized during the meeting in Moerdijk. Shell has set itself the goal of processing one million tonnes of waste plastics into pyrolysis oil by 2030, as a replacement for petroleum in the production of chemical building blocks for new plastics. This can only be achieved by working on it at several production sites: in the Netherlands, Germany, the US and Singapore at the same time.

The current collection of packaging plastic does not yield enough to produce enough pyrolysis oil for the entire chemical industry. Kim Meulenbroeks of Renewi says that it is conceivable that the Netherlands will even have to import plastic waste for this purpose in the future. “Ultimately, waste is also a raw material that goes to the highest bidder.”

Responsible choice

On the other hand, the brand owners play a role: large brand manufacturers such as Unilever who choose to use circular plastics in the packaging of their products.

Light point

Arnold Stokking, initiator of the Green Chemistry, New Economy platform, points out that chemical recycling is certainly not just about technology, but about all the other preconditions surrounding it, such as the creation of value chains, financing, scaling up and legislation. One bright spot is that the government is seriously investing in innovation, for example via Invest-NL and the National Growth Fund. GCNE is involved in various Growth Fund projects relevant to chemical recycling, including Circular Plastics, Future Carbon and the new Biobased Circular (BBC) application. At the same time, the platform is building towards bridging the gap between small and medium-sized companies that want to scale and the big industrial players that are indispensable to make a real difference in the market.
In the meantime, we are waiting for new European directives for chemical recycling.

Practical help

In particular, the 'end-of-waste status' regulations (when does waste cease to be waste and can it be considered a clean raw material?) is one of the major challenges. READ MORE