Welcome to the economic future of the United States: Big Tech, Big Data—and Big… Recycling? That’s the conclusion of a new analysis from the American Chemistry Council (ACC), which says that if …
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Welcome to the economic future of the United States: Big Tech, Big Data—and Big… Recycling?
That’s the conclusion of a new analysis from the American Chemistry Council (ACC), which says that if America dominates the coming advanced recycling industry the same way it has dominated technology, the results could be billions in economic activity and tens of thousands of jobs.
The technology needed for the advanced recycling revolution is here, says ACC President Ross Eisenberg. What’s needed is a new mindset. “Recycling is really manufacturing.”
Instead of looking at used plastics as a problem to be solved, he says, they should be seen as a resource to be monetized. That can’t happen at most of the 245 plastic recycling facilities nationwide, which use mechanical recycling processes that involve sorting, cleaning, shredding, melting and remolding plastic.
“Mechanical recycling is tried and true,” Eisenberg said, but it can’t handle many of the most common forms of plastic. “The films, the pouches, the tubes, the synthetic textiles—they still end up in landfills because the existing recycling infrastructure we have here in the U.S. just can’t handle them.”
That’s where advanced recycling comes in. Unlike mechanical recycling, advanced recycling turns plastics into a gas or liquid raw material —“reducing them back to molecules,” Eisenberg says—which can then be turned into “brand-new plastics for use in virtually any product or packaging type, including food- and pharmaceutical-grade plastics.”
Similar to the way the mining industry supplies raw materials that are turned into consumer products, recycling plastic into its raw form can supply industries with raw materials while removing massive amounts of plastic from the waste stream.
The private sector has embraced the concept, with billions of dollars being invested in advanced recycling technology, according to ACC.
A 2021 Government Accountability Office report touted the technology. “Chemical recycling can produce raw materials of virgin quality, thereby decreasing demand for fossil fuels and other natural resources,” the report states. “Developing advanced recycling technologies could promote domestic business and employment. Chemical recycling creates a market for plastic waste and a new way to reuse some plastics.”
The ACC analysis suggests that widespread use of advanced recycling would create 173,200 jobs with a total annual payroll of $12.8 billion. It could also add $48.7 billion in total economic output — the combined value of goods and services produced directly and indirectly as a result.
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rcreshkoff
Where to begin?
The one person quoted in (and throughout) the piece is the president of the American Chemistry Council (ACC), an aggressive lobbying organization bankrolled by the petrochemical industry. These are the people who have prevented the New York State legislature from passing the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act for the past three years.
Mr. ACC is trying to sell readers on a techno-fix for our plastic pollution problem. But so-called "advanced recycling," also called chemical recycling, is neither new nor advanced. It's been around for decades, and it's been a publicly funded failure. I know because a couple of years ago, I edited an in-depth report that examined 11 chemical recycling facilities in the U.S. Two have since folded.
Advanced recycling sounds great in theory. Now if only plastics weren't made with toxic chemicals that are known to harm human health....
What's more, all recycled plastic has even more toxic chemicals in it than plastic made from virgin resin. Many of these chemicals have been linked through multiple lines of evidence to a host of health problems: obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, infertility, autism, and certain cancers, among others.
Also, all plastics recycling, including mechanical recycling, creates micro- and nanoplastics that inevitably escape into the environment. Microplastics have been found at the top of Mt. Everest and on the deep sea floor. They're inside every human organ. Lungs? Got 'em. Bloodstream? Check. Gut, brain, and *****? Yup. They're even in newborn infants.
"Advanced recycling" is just the industry's latest marketing tactic to keep on selling more plastic. It's smoke and mirrors, folks. We need to slash plastic production. Period.
Rebekah Creshkoff
Tuesday, January 13 Report this