Plastics Companies Know About Chemical Recycling’s Shortcomings — but Still Sell It As a Solution

For years, the plastics industry’s narrative about recycling has been falling apart. Research and media investigations have revealed that it doesn’t make economic sense and that petrochemical companies have used it more as a public relations gambit than as a serious effort to mitigate the plastic pollution crisis. Conventional recycling has processed only 9 percent of plastic waste globally, leaving the rest to be landfilled, incinerated, or littered.

Rather than reducing the production of plastic, which is made out of fossil fuels, many companies have begun promoting a supposedly more effective solution: “advanced recycling,” also known as “chemical recycling.” These terms refer to several different processes that use heat and pressure to break plastic into its chemical building blocks. These building blocks can then, in theory, be turned back into new plastic products.