Chemical recycling is back in the news.
In September 2024, California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil alleging that the petrochemical giant has exacerbated the plastic pollution crisis worldwide by deceiving the public for decades with promises that recycling was the answer to the growing amount of plastic waste the company produces.
Mechanical recycling was originally introduced in the 1970s as the solution to the growing plastic waste problem although it didn’t become widespread until the 1980s. Even when plastic production was far less than it is today, the plastic manufacturing industry knew it could not be successful. As early as 1989, the head of the Vinyl Institute acknowledged that "recycling cannot go on indefinitely, and does not solve the solid waste problem."
More recently, ExxonMobil has been promoting chemical recycling as a technological breakthrough that has the potential to make plastics sustainable. The chemical recycling process uses high heat or solvents to convert certain types of plastic waste into petrochemical feedstock to make new plastic. Although ExxonMobil claims that chemical recycling works and is financially feasible, three of the eleven chemical recycling facilities in the U.S. closed in 2024.
Jenny Gitlitz, Director of Solutions to Plastic Pollution for Beyond Plastics, states, “Chemical recycling hasn’t succeeded at scale because the financial and technical obstacles are just too big.”
Despite these closings and the fact that most of the remaining facilities are not operating at full capacity, the industry is focused on building new chemical recycling plants and has been lobbying states to pass laws that reclassify these facilities as manufacturing facilities rather than waste facilities. Such laws would allow these facilities to meet less-stringent environmental standards. Twenty-four states have already passed these laws.
Recent reports indicate that chemical recycling (also called advanced recycling, molecular recycling and chemical conversion) has a negative impact on the environment, the climate, human health and environmental justice. Critics report that chemical recycling can emit up to 96 toxic chemicals and greenhouse gases. The waste produced in chemical recycling facilities is also toxic. One plant produced just under a half million pounds of waste that was scheduled to be incinerated offsite according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.
ExxonMobil has recently retaliated by filing a lawsuit against California Attorney General Rob Bonta and five environmental groups, including the Sierra Club, claiming that they have “defamed ExxonMobil’s integrity and reputation” with their accusations in lawsuits that advanced recycling technology does not work.
“Exxon is clearly confused about the difference between defamation and accountability,” Sierra Club spokesperson Jonathon Berman said. “This lawsuit is a shameless attempt at intimidation by a multibillion-dollar polluter corporation that covered up its climate change denial for decades.”
With plastic production expected to double or triple in the coming decades, it is clear that plastic recycling of any type is not the answer. With approximately 242 million metric tons of plastic manufactured worldwide annually and less than 10% being currently recycled, there are no magical high-tech recycling solutions to the problem. The bottom line is to reduce how much plastic is manufactured in the first place.
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