"The controversial practice looms large in state environmental laws, federal regulation and global plastic treaty negotiations."
"With a presidential election looming, a wave of state-level legislation circulating, an international plastics treaty taking form and fights brewing over proposed facilities, 2024 is set to shape the regulatory future of chemical recycling in the U.S.
As of September 2023, the 11 constructed chemical recycling facilities in the country are capable of processing 459,280 tons of waste plastic each year, using pyrolysis and gasification to convert it into fuel or chemicals that can then be used to create new plastic, according to a report from Beyond Plastics and IPEN (the International Pollutants Elimination Network). At full capacity, those facilities can process about 1.3% of the country’s plastic waste, the report found. Judith Enck, president of Beyond Plastics, told Environmental Health News (EHN) at least twice as many new facilities have been proposed, some of which haven’t yet advanced past a press release but all of which are emboldened by a flurry of state laws loosening regulations on the controversial practice.
In 2017, Florida became the first state in the country to exempt chemical recycling from solid waste regulations and ensure it would be regulated as manufacturing. The following year, Wisconsin and Georgia did the same, allowing facilities to skirt the environmental oversight of waste management plants while also opening them up to a larger universe of taxpayer subsidies, Enck said.
Twenty-four states have now passed similar legislation, according to the industry association American Chemistry Council, and bills are making the rounds in many more. Renee Sharp, strategic adviser for environmental health advocate Safer States, told EHN the environmental community was “caught flat-footed” by the spread of industry-backed laws that ease the development of new facilities. “We’ve been playing catch-up, but we’re catching up very fast,” she said."
Ben Seal reports for Environmental Health News March 4, 2024.
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