According to a Monday study by an environmental group, most plastic “advanced” recycling plants in the United States don’t actually recycle plastic. Instead, they convert it into a dirty fuel while creating toxic waste in low income communities.
Industry groups are promoting advanced recycling, also known chemical recycling. It breaks down plastic to its molecular building blocks.
It is capable of capturing more than traditional “mechanical recycling” that involves cutting up plastic and making pellets to create new products.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a non profit that has helped to influence key legislation since its inception in 1970, released a report accusing the plastics industry with misleading the public through “greenwashing”.
Veena Singla, a senior scientist from the NRDC, said to AFP that there was a lot of enthusiasm and energy around the idea of chemical recycling as a possible solution to the plastics waste crisis.
“We felt it very important to understand, and what are these technologies actually doing?”
The NRDC discovered that, out of hundreds of plant announcements, only eight were either operational/coming soon to be operational, based upon official federal and state documents.
Five of the eight were involved in plastic-to fuel conversion to create a low-grade fuel. One was converting carpets from nylon to nylon, while two were converting chemical components from plastic.
According to the report, producing fuel from plastic waste is not considered recycling according to international standards. It also causes harmful air pollution and greenhouse gases when it is burned.
One of the plastic to-chemical plants in Oregon, run by the company Agilyx takes the waste polystyrene. It then converts it into synthetic styrene which can be used to make new polystyrene.
According to the company, it is shipping hundreds to thousands of pounds worth of styrene oil to be used for energy and not to be recycled back into plastic.
Singla said to AFP that it was unclear why the company would go through the “wasteful” and inefficient process of converting polystyrene into styrene. Then burn the styrene. However, Singla suggested that one possible reason was that the styrene was very poor quality.
Official figures show that the plant produced nearly 500,000 pounds worth of hazardous waste in 2019, and sent most of it offsite for burning.
Agilyx, when reached for comment, stated that he and Agilyx agreed that plastic waste is a problem in the world. That too much plastic ends up in landfills and oceans, and that plastics of all types are not being recycled into useful products.
“These are the problems that Agilyx is working on solving.”
It also stated that chemical recycling does not produce hazardous waste in a significant amount.
The NRDC also found that “six of these facilities are in communities which are disproportionately Black/brown” and five are in communities in which a disproportionate amount of households have a income below $25,000 (relative to the national average).
Each year, an estimated 242 million metric tonnes of plastic waste is produced globally. It pollutes cities and blocks the oceans.
The United States is a major producer of plastic waste, but only 8.7 percent of it is recycled.
Singla called for bans on single-use plastic items and said, “What we need to do is focus on solutions that address root causes of the problem: We need less plastic, period.”
2022 AFP
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The environmental group (2022 March 8), has criticized “Chemical Recycling” of plastic.
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