Given low domestic recycling rates for plastic, the efficacy of recycling is often called into question.
Yet that doesn’t mean recycling doesn’t work. Advanced recycling technologies, as well as traditional mechanical recycling, play a pivotal role in addressing plastic waste and recovering the value in used plastics.
Advanced recycling isn’t just one type of recycling; it is a suite of technologies that use chemical reactions to break down plastic waste into its original molecular building blocks to produce synthetic oil, synthetic gas molecules or monomers that can be used to make new, valuable virgin-quality plastics.
Advanced recycling technologies are not a replacement for mechanical recycling. They’re a necessary complement. Together, the full range of recycling technologies can give new life to used plastics and keep waste out of the environment.
Mechanical recycling is often the first choice for many recyclers because of its comparative simplicity, but advanced recycling technologies have a specific role to play, too. There are strategic environmental advantages of advanced recycling that need to be considered when creating a waste disposal plan.
Advanced recycling technologies work for a broader range of plastic feedstocks and end products. A wider variety of plastics can be recovered and converted back into polymers that are as strong and pure as virgin plastics, meaning advanced recycled content can be used to make a wider range of end products, including food packaging, health care equipment and safety applications.
Advanced recycling technologies can also reduce the emissions impact of plastics. Compared to the emissions intensity of manufacturing plastics from newly extracted natural resources, advanced recycled plastics offer significantly lower lifecycle emissions, according to a 2023 study by Argonne National Laboratory, a DOE research center.
Recycling works, but the recycling rate in the U.S. is far too low. That second part is what needs to change.
For any recycling strategies to be viable and achievable, the U.S. needs to expand waste management and collection. Much more plastic is recyclable than what makes it into the U.S. recycling stream. Expanding and upgrading waste collection and sorting systems throughout the U.S. will help address this imbalance.
Another angle is to tackle the issue at the manufacturing level by designing plastic products that are much easier to recycle. This trend has already begun as manufacturers are cutting unnecessary volume from packaging and reducing the number of products containing multiple types of plastic, which can be barriers to recycling.
Improving the regulatory environment for recycling by modernizing the regulations governing recycling processes and feedstocks could spur new investments in recycling infrastructure and waste collection systems while also growing the market for recycled feedstocks. For example, regulations classifying advanced recycling facilities as manufacturing — not waste — operations, and recognizing their outputs as equivalent to virgin feedstocks, would provide regulatory certainty and help boost recycling rates.
Plastics are essential in the modern world. They offer many advantages for consumers and manufacturers and will become even more important in the decades ahead as the global population grows.
At the same time, plastic waste in the environment is unacceptable. Reusing plastics, reducing unnecessary packaging while redesigning products to maximize their recyclability, building out more waste collection and sorting infrastructure, expanding the role of mechanical and advanced recycling all have parts to play in eliminating waste.
Advanced recycling, specifically, needs to be part of the strategy because it offers the greatest potential to expand the universe of plastics that can be recycled, while reducing the dependence on natural resources in the manufacture of plastics.
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