Chemical recycling: the plastic industry’s latest promise
For decades, the plastics industry has told us that recycling can solve the plastic pollution crisis. It hasn’t. Now, the industry is making a new version of the same promise. Chemical recycling – sometimes called advanced recycling or molecular recycling – is being promoted as a technological breakthrough that can take plastic, break it down, and turn it into new plastic again and again.
The evidence tells a very different story.
No chemical recycling facility has demonstrated it can take post-consumer plastic waste and turn it back into new plastic at a meaningful scale. Instead, these technologies convert plastic into fuels, chemicals, or hazardous byproducts that are ultimately burned. Only a fraction of what enters these facilities can even theoretically be used to make new plastic. These facilities also generate toxic pollution, consume enormous amounts of energy, and rely on fossil fuels to operate. Before policymakers invest public dollars or weaken environmental protections to make way for these facilities, it’s important to understand what these technologies actually do.
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Chemical Recycling: Industry Claims vs. Reality
Industry claim: Chemical recycling can recycle plastic waste
Reality: Only 0.1%–14% of plastic processed at chemical recycling facilities can be manufactured into new plastic products. Most plastic waste is broken down into oils, gases, fuel, chemicals, and hazardous waste. This material is ultimately burned.
Industry claim: Chemical recycling makes hard-to-manage plastic recyclable
Reality: Chemical recycling doesn’t eliminate the problems that make all plastic (including plastic film) difficult to recycle. Different resin types, additives, adhesives, food residue, and other contaminants interfere with the already flawed technology.
Industry claim: Chemical recycling reduces the demand for fossil fuels
Reality: Chemical recycling relies heavily on fossil fuels. The small amount of feedstock that can be turned into new plastics must be mixed with large amounts of new fossil fuel-derived material to create new plastics.
Industry claim: Chemical recycling helps address climate change
Reality: These technologies are energy-intensive, emit substantial greenhouse gases, and have environmental impacts far worse than conventional plastic production. The real solution is to reduce our dependence on fossil-fuel based plastic—not build more infrastructure to process it.
Industry claim: Chemical recycling is good for the environment
Reality: Chemical recycling doesn’t eliminate plastic’s toxic chemicals—it can spread them. Facilities can release hazardous air pollution and generate hazardous waste containing substances like benzene, lead, mercury, arsenic, and dioxins. Communities near these facilities are left to bear the environmental and health risks.
Industry claim: Chemical recycling is not incineration
Reality: Chemical recycling technologies may heat plastic without directly burning it, but much of what they produce is used as fuel. That fuel is burned on-site to power the facility or is shipped elsewhere to be burned—turning plastic waste into another source of pollution.
Industry claim: Chemical recycling is a solution to plastic pollution
Reality: Plastic pollution is a production problem. Presenting chemical recycling as a solution gives producers a reason to manufacture more disposable plastic. But chemical recycling doesn’t make that waste disappear. Facilities still generate char, ash, and other hazardous waste that must be landfilled, while much of their output becomes fuel that is ultimately burned.
Industry claim: Chemical recycling is a manufacturing process
Reality: These facilities handle plastic waste. They don’t manufacture anything but pollution. Classifying them as manufacturing operations exempts them from solid waste regulations designed to protect communities and the environment.
Why chemical recycling is a distraction
Chemical recycling does not fix the fundamental problems with plastic. Instead, it creates a new complicated, expensive, and polluting system for managing plastic waste. And that’s the entire point. It’s a distraction from real solutions so that plastic producers can keep manufacturing – and profiting off – plastic. This is the same story that, for decades, consumers have been told about conventional plastic recycling. We should not repeat that mistake.
Plastic is problematic because of several factors: it’s made from fossil fuels, contains thousands of chemicals, creates pollution throughout its lifecycle, and generates enormous quantities of waste. Inventing increasingly elaborate ways to dispose of this highly toxic, polluting material will never solve the plastic pollution crisis.
Real progress requires confronting plastic pollution at its source. That means phasing out unnecessary plastic use and reducing the amount of plastic we produce. It means expanding reuse and refill systems that keep products in circulation without creating more waste. And where recycling does make sense, we should rely on proven mechanical recycling systems for the materials they can actually handle.
Industry is taking the distraction one step further. Plastic and petrochemical companies are pushing legislation across the country to classify chemical recycling facilities as manufacturing facilities rather than waste facilities. Why? Because reclassifying these facilities as “manufacturing” an make them easier to permit and weakens oversight. It can also obscure how much plastic they accept, what happens to that material, and how much pollution they produce. But changing what we call these facilities does not change what they do – or the risks they pose.
Claims are easy to make, evidence tells the real story
The plastics industry’s latest recycling promise should not determine environmental policy. We already know how to reduce plastic pollution – make less plastic.
The next time you hear chemical recycling described as a climate solution, a breakthrough technology, or the future of recycling, look beyond the marketing. Ask what the facility actually produces. Does it create new plastic products – or fuels that are burned? How much material is truly recycled? And who bears the environmental and public health impacts?
The answers to those questions matter. Understanding the difference between industry claims and the evidence helps communities and policymakers make informed decisions. Plus, it keeps the focus on solutions that actually reduce waste and protect people and the environment.
What is “advanced recycling?”
Deceptively named false solutions like “advanced recycling” are nothing more than a magic act. Fossil fuel giants pretend that they’ve made single-use plastics “sustainable.” In reality, “advanced recycling” is just a different way to burn plastic.
Loopholes, injustice, and the “advanced recycling” myth
Advanced recycling is not the solution fossil fuel and plastic lobbyists make it out to be. This expensive, unreliable, and toxic myth doesn’t recycle meaningful amounts of plastic. This is a fossil fuel industry campaign to keep us hooked on plastics.
High-heat legislative toolkit
With High-Heat Facilities Laws in place, we can protect communities from the toxic and climate-damaging facilities that burn trash. But the “right” law for your community may be different from what works in another state or city. This legislative toolkit presents a full suite of options for you to consider.