ACC Statement on ProPublica Story about Pyrolysis (Advanced Recycling)

WASHINGTON (June 20, 2024) — Today, ProPublica published an article questioning the value of advanced recycling. The following statement may be attributed to Ross Eisenberg, president of America’s Plastic Makers^®:

“America’s plastic makers envision a future where significantly more used plastics are remade into new plastics, much more of our virgin resources are conserved and displaced by existing resources, and plastic products, like wind-turbines and food-preserving packaging, contribute even more to sustainable living. Advanced recycling is one tool in the toolbox to help us achieve these goals.

“ProPublica’s article on pyrolysis-based advanced recycling unfortunately misses the essential benefit of pyrolysis oil outputs – a barrel of pyrolysis oil generated helps keep a barrel of fossil-derived resources in the ground. 

“Pyrolysis-based advanced recycling, like many other industries, relies on mass balance accounting to substantiate product claims. (More on pyrolysis and mass balance accounting is available here.)

“The biggest constraint plastic makers have today in scaling up advanced recycling is consistently obtaining an appropriate supply of used plastics. This is a fundamental challenge of our decades-old collection and sortation infrastructure. We will continue to advocate for policy to bring the infrastructure and collection systems into the 21st century so more used plastics become new plastics.

“While ProPublica may question the effectiveness of pyrolysis, the billions of dollars plastics makers are investing are real, the products on store shelves, and used in hospitals and e-commerce packaging today are real, and the engineers and scientists working to optimize and expand its capacity are real.”