Plastics Firms Say Lack of Clarity Could Put a Chill on Chemical Recycling
The plastics industry considers chemical recycling a key technology for boosting low recycling rates, but some companies are warning that unfavorable government regulations risk "chilling" investments.
At two recent conferences, resin makers, chemical recyclers and industry lawyers argued that unclear policy, including from the Environmental Protection Agency, is holding back money.
"Some of the proposed rules that have come out have had a chilling effect in our mind, because it's created doubt about the technology," said Melanie Bower, regulatory development manager for plastics circularity at ExxonMobil Corp.
"We really would like to see regulatory certainty come into play with some federal statutes and definitions that would provide that certainty for all of us to continue to make investments in this space," she said.
Bower, speaking at the GlobalChem conference in Washington on April 16, said the federal government should regulate chemical recycling as manufacturing, rather than solid waste disposal, and should allow mass balance certification for measuring recycled content claims.
Similarly, an executive at Eastman Chemical Co. told another recent conference that clearer government policy is needed to "de-risk" investment.
"We need certainty in policy in order to make these investments make sense, to de-risk those investments," said Chris Layton, Eastman's sustainability director, speaking April 23 at the Chemicals of Concern Policy Summit in Charlotte, N.C. "Uncertainty about these technologies is a barrier to us getting that regulatory certainty."
Chemical recycling ‘does not work'
But other speakers at the Charlotte summit argued that chemical recycling technology has larger economic and environmental problems.
"If chemical recycling was a real solution, it would be in widespread use," said John Hocevar, oceans campaign director for Greenpeace USA. "If it was safe, industry would not be lobbying for exemptions.
"The petrochemical lobby has been telling us about chemical recycling or safe waste-to-fuel technology for decades, always saying it's just around the corner," he said. "Chemical recycling does not work from an economic standpoint or from an environmental standpoint."
Similarly, a 2023 report titled "Chemical Recycling: A Dangerous Deception," from the environmental group Beyond Plastics identified only 11 chemical recycling facilities operating in the United States.
It included a foreword from a former vice president of government affairs for the Society of the Plastics Industry Inc. — now called the Plastics Industry Association — who said the report's research "does not produce optimism about the industry's potential for success" with chemical recycling.
The former executive, Lew Freeman, wrote in the report that low plastic recycling rates, despite more than three decades of investment and industry work, raise questions about "the plastics industry's seriousness and ability to achieve its stated goal."
Industry wants federal clarity
But executives and lawyers at the GlobalChem conference, organized by the American Chemistry Council, said government decisions are getting in the way of developing chemical recycling as an additional tool for addressing plastic waste, particularly for harder-to-recycle plastics.
Mark Duvall, a partner with Beveridge & Diamond P.C. in Washington, said a Biden administration EPA decision in 2023 to create what are called "significant new use rules" around pyrolysis has chilled development.
He said corporate filings for premarket notification approvals for plastic waste pyrolysis have ground to a halt for advanced recycling, using an industry term for chemical recycling.
"Those proposed SNURs may well be having a chilling effect on advanced recycling or waste pyrolysis, because there has not been a single waste plastic pyrolyzed PMN filed since," said Duvall. "Until there is greater clarity about where the regulatory system is going at the federal level, and TSCA [Toxic Substances Control Act] in particular… it's going to be a challenge for the development of advanced recycling."
A chemical recycling company speaking at GlobalChem agreed.
Jeff Gold, founder and chief technology officer at chemical recycling firm Nexus Circular in Atlanta, said his company found the SNUR and PMN approval process difficult.
"It was supposed to be a 90-day process, and it took us over two years, that was one of the big challenges," Gold said.
"Mark mentioned there's a chilling effect and that certainly gives you pause about, should we produce another product here, we'd have to go through that PMN thing again," Gold said.
Instead, he said companies may choose to work within the constraints of their existing approvals.
"There's a lot of belief that advanced recycling isn't really recycling and doesn't work," he said. "I can tell you with a great deal of certainty, it is real. It does work, and it's an extremely effective tool that's going to help us as a society reclaim this resource that we've been discarding."
Regulatory dive
Changes in federal regulations around chemical recycling were a key point of the plastics industry's annual Washington lobbying fly-in in early April. An ACC executive leading the effort called the Republican control of the White House and Congress a "really unique opportunity" to make changes.
The regulatory status of pyrolysis shifted between the first Trump administration and former President Joe Biden's government.
Duvall said the first Trump administration proposed in 2020 that pyrolysis should not be regulated as solid waste operations, supporting the plastics industry's position that it should instead be regulated under the Clean Air Act as manufacturing.
But the Biden administration in 2023 withdrew that 2020 Trump plan, Duvall said.
He said the new Trump administration has not said what it will do but Duvall said he would not be surprised if it returns to its 2020 position.
As well, Duvall noted that about 25 U.S. state legislatures have passed laws explicitly saying that chemical recycling, including pyrolysis, should be regulated as manufacturing, rather than as solid waste.
He said regulating the technology as solid waste operations "can be quite burdensome on the economics, among other things, of advanced recycling" because of state record keeping requirements.
ExxonMobil's Bower said she's looking for the federal government to provide national clarity around chemical recycling, as more state legislatures pass extended producer responsibility laws for packaging and the regulatory picture gets more complicated.
In April, Maryland and Washington became the sixth and seventh states to pass packaging EPR.
"EPR is becoming, I think, more challenging because there's different definitions by state," Bower said. "It would be really helpful to have a federal definition for what is recycling that is inclusive of advanced recycling and inclusive of allowing for claims to be made when using mass balance and third-party certification."