Page 85 - Plastics News July 2025

IN THE NEWS

Environmentalists cry foul Another critique has to do with scale. Dell says
that roughly 120,000 t per year of pyrolysis and
Environmentalists loathe pyrolysis. And a grow- other chemical recycling capacity is currently
ing number of jurisdictions, such as California, onstream in the US. This represents a minus-
don’t consider it recycling at all. One critic is cule fraction of the overall plastics production of
Jan Dell, a chemical engineer who founded and about 56 million t in North America in 2021, ac-
heads the Last Beach Cleanup, an environmental cording to the American Chemistry Council. Just
organization. She has helped larger environmen- one new polyethylene plant has about 500,000
tal groups, such as the Natural Resources De- t of annual capacity.
fense Council and Greenpeace, prepare reports
on the practice. For presentations, Dell has com- To critics like Dell, pyrolysis is a greenwashing
piled 16 pages of objections. scheme meant to fool the public into thinking
plastics are recycled more than they actually
Dell contends that Renewlogy, a Utah-based are. She points out that the industry, under simi-
company that was developing a pyrolysis plant, lar pressure in the early 1990s, built up a lot of
folded for precisely this reason. Her bullet points recycling capacity, only to shutter it when the
even contain a photo from a Nexus Circular fa- projects proved unworkable and public attention
cility in Atlanta showing bales of relatively clean faded. The industry is now repeating this pat-
plastic film of the type used at warehouses—evi- tern, Dell says.
dence, she says, that the company isn’t accept-
ing much postconsumer mixed plastic waste.

A second charge is that pyrolysis is really incin-
eration, even though pyrolysis reactors operate
in the absence of oxygen. “If you look at just the
pyrolysis vessel itself, no, there’s no burning. I
have to agree with that,” Dell says. “But here’s
the deal: How do you heat that pyrolysis vessel
to the 900 to 1,500 F you need? You heat it by
0
incinerating the gas that comes off of it.”

Dell points to the pyrolysis company Brightmark,
which disclosed to the EPA that 70% of the out-
put from a plant it is building in Ashley, Indiana,
will be gases that it plans to use for energy or
flare. Brightmark now says those figures were
submitted in error. Such gases represent only
about 18% of the output, the firm says, and it is
submitting the updated figure to the EPA.

July 2025 PLASTICS NEWS 85