Utah Joins 21 Other States in Supporting Advanced Recycling of Plastics
With nearly half the country acting together, support for the advanced recycling of plastics has taken a solid leap forward. Image Courtesy: Envato Elements
Utah has recently become the 22nd state to allow advanced plastics recycling, highlighting a significant push to reclassify these processes from "solid waste handling" to manufacturing. This reclassification provides numerous regulatory and economic benefits, including government incentives for plant construction, tax breaks, and reduced regulatory oversight.
According to a statement from Joshua Baca, vice president of plastics at the American Chemistry Council (ACC), advanced recycling technologies are crucial for enabling a circular economy by transforming used plastics into high-quality new plastics. He emphasized that characterizing these processes as "waste combustion" or "burning plastics" is scientifically inaccurate and detracts from the meaningful progress in this field.
In a recent article in Scientific American, Baca highlighted the growth of advanced recycling facilities in the US, with more than 70 projects have received investments totaling $7.5 billion since 2017. These facilities are capable of diverting 17.5 billion pounds of waste from landfills. Additionally, an independent study found that advanced recycling reduces greenhouse gas emissions by 43% compared to waste-to-energy incineration of plastic films made from virgin resources.
Baca also stressed that regulating advanced recycling as solid waste incineration would be inconsistent with the Clean Air Act's legal criteria and would undermine the EPA's National Recycling Goal of increasing the US recycling rate to 50% by 2030. He urged lawmakers and the EPA to follow the science, reject false claims, and visit advanced recycling facilities to learn the facts in person.
Companies like Wendy's and Warby Parker already use advanced recycling to create plastic consumer products from hard-to-recycle plastics that mechanical recycling cannot process. As more states embrace advanced recycling, the potential for a circular economy in plastics grows.
Source: Scientific American
Enjoy this article? Let’s start a conversation! Reach out to us and explore what Portco has to offer.