Globally, over 350 million metric tons of plastic are produced annually,

but according to the OECD, only 14 to 18 percent of that is recycled.

In the U.S., it's even bleaker.

The recycling rate stands at about 8.4 percent, a number that has been on

the decline, even as the public has become more aware of the plastic waste

crisis. While we're all so shocked at the amount of plastic waste we

generate each day, v irgin plastic production keeps increasing four or

five percent year-over-year.

China used to be able to profitably recycle much of the world's plastic

waste. But that came to a halt in 2018, and now we have to deal with it

domestically. Problem is, most plastics just aren't recyclable.

And even those that are degrade in quality each time they're remade,

meaning they'll eventually end up in the landfill too.

So we can't recycle our way out of this problem.

Or can we? Mechanical recycling won't save us.

That is, chopping plastic up, melting it down and remaking it, the way

that we do now. Instead, the industry is betting big on something called

chemical recycling, which can handle all types of plastic waste.

This new technology can take those plastics, break them down into the raw

materials and make brand new quality plastics out of them, which gives you

a much bigger expansion in terms of potential end markets.

With governments around the world increasingly banning single-use plastics,

industry groups like the American Chemistry Council are hoping that

chemical recycling can save both the industry and the environment.

Companies like Brightmark, Plastic Energy and Agilyx are now trying to turn

plastic into fuel and plastic back into plastic.

We are going to have plastics in the environment for the foreseeable

future, and I want to find what is the most optimal way to reduce waste

and increase the environmental sustainability aspect of those products

that we use. But skepticism abounds.

After all, plastic made from scratch is actually cheaper than recycled

plastic, so how will the economics even work out?

And can turning plastic into fossil fuels really be considered recycling?

Shouldn't we just focus on producing less in the first place?

It's up for debate. There are thousands of varieties of plastics, but

seven main categories, of which only two can be recycled by traditional

means. PET, which water bottles are made of, and HDPE, used in things like

milk jugs and shampoo containers.

S orting plastics and removing contamination is labor intensive work.

A nd so since the 1980s, the United States, alongside other nations like

the U.K. and Australia, sent much of its plastic waste to China, where

cheap labor allowed Chinese producers to profitably recycle it.

But as single stream recycling became the norm and plastic was thrown in

the same bin as glass, cardboard and other materials, China noticed

increasingly high contamination levels.

After years of warning, the country set strict new contamination limits on

imports that were nearly impossible to meet, leaving wealthy nations

scrambling to find new overseas markets.

What we have done over the last few years is to export to countries that

had less infrastructure of what we have and then created a much bigger

problem. So why not just develop the infrastructure to deal with it

locally? Basically, mechanical recycling in the U.S.

just isn't profitable without incentives or subsidies.

Virgin plastic is incredibly cheap and we are seeing traditional mechanical

recycling operations shutting down because it simply does not pay.

They cannot sell their recycled plastic at a rate that would justify

paying people to collect it.

But even as states like California try to prop up their curbside recycling

programs and centers with subsidies, there's still just so much that can

go wrong. While number one and number two plastics are recyclable, a bout

70 percent end up in a landfill or incinerator anyway.

It's too contaminated or it's too difficult to separate.

A nd then the recycled polymer is sort of low-grade.

And then on top of that, it's typically too expensive.

Absent strong regulation, public pressure or true altruism, there's just no

reason why a corporation would pay more for lower quality recycled

plastic. So we need to find something else.

And then, of course, something else would be switch m aterials or source

reduction, use less.

But obviously that would be bad news for the plastic industry.

So I think they see the only way forward is chemical recycling.

Enter chemical recycling, a process that can break down any plastic, type

one through seven, into its molecular building blocks and then

theoretically convert it into virgin-quality plastic, chemicals or diesel

and petrol fuels.

There's been a huge investment in these chemical recycling technologies in

recent years. They've been very hyped by industry.

They're saying that these technologies are going to allow them to capture

a much broader stream of plastics and turn them back into plastics like

new, so we could get more of a circular economy with that.

The most common technology used in this process, pyrolysis, is not new.

It involves heating up a material like waste plastic in an oxygen-starved

environment, which causes it to break down into a mix of simpler

compounds, which are then used as building blocks for new products.

But criti ques abound.

Tangri's organization, the Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives,

or GAIA, recently released a report which concluded that no chemical

recycling facility in the U.S.

is turning plastic back into plastic at a commercial scale yet, though

there's been many attempts.

Of the 37 chemical recycling facilities proposed in the U.S.

since 2000, GAIA reports that only three are operational, and they're

mostly turning plastic into fuel, which the organization calls the

opposite of an eco-friendly solution.

The companies themselves though, beg to differ, Brightmark, founded in

2016, is building a commercial-scale plastics-to-fuel plant in Ashley,

Indiana, and aims to process 100,000 tons of plastic by 2021.

It will sell fuel from this plant to BP.

So ultimately, our goal is to produce less combustible fuels.

There are at least 14 percent less greenhouse gas emissions associated

with the fuels that we produce versus pulling crude oil or natural gas out

of the ground. In addition to fuels, Brightmark's process also produces

paraffin waxes, and Powell says the tech is ready to convert plastic back

into plastic. They just need customers.

I think the market is there and I think what you would see from us in the

future is relationships with folks that achieve our goals around

circularity and their goals around circularity, because we can do it now.

But in the meantime, Tangri questions whether turning plastic into fossil

fuel is really a solution worth supporting.

Is plastic-to-fuel better than say, I don't know, syngas derived from coal?

Yeah, probably.

But who uses that?

It's on its way out. These are not clean fuels, whether they are

absolutely the dirtiest or they're the second dirtiest or they're the

third dirtiest, t hey are clearly fossil fuels and they are highly

contaminated fossil fuels.

Then there's U.K.-based Plastic Energy, which is turning plastic back into

plastic on a commercial scale at two facilities in Spain.

We 're targeted to half a processing capacity sometime by 2023 of about

300,000 tonnes of end-of-life plastics per year.

Much like Brightmark, the company started off producing fuels, also through

a pyrolysis-based process that converted plastic waste into naphtha and

diesel. But now Monreal says they're totally focused on plastic-to-plastic

recycling. Since April this year, 100 percent of our TACOIL is used to

create new plastics.

We are committed to the creation of a circular economy for plastics going

forward. Monreal says that Europe's ambitious environmental goals provide

unique incentives for this type of technology to flourish.

We have commitments to double the recycling quotas in Europe from about

five million tonnes today per year to 10 million tonnes per year by 2025.

He also cites Europe's high landfilling fees and multi-stream recycling

infrastructure as advantageous .

With plastic, glass and cardboard already separated at the source, Plastic

Energy can acquire difficult to recycle plastics more easily and

economically than in the U.S.

As the company tries to increase its processing capacity by over 2,000

percent in the next three years, i t may face competition from

Oregon-based Agilyx, which is also trying to turn plastics back into

plastics and is looking to expand internationally.

We have a pathway and a roadmap to take plastic recycling from the current

10 percent to upwards of 90 percent.

Agilyx was one of the earliest companies in this space.

Founded in 2004, it ran a plastics-to-fuel operation until 2015, providing

jet fuel to the Department of Defense.

Low oil prices forced the company to pivot, and now Agilyx specializes in

converting polystyrene back into styrene, which is used to make disposable

cups, takeout containers and packing foam.

Agilyx is often hailed as a leader in the space, but G AIA has called its

efficiency into question, reporting that only one tenth of the waste that

Agilyx processed in 2018 was actually turned into styrene, a figure that

the company disputes.

So yes, they were significantly off on the yield numbers.

And if our yields were in the 10 to 20 percent range, we would not have an

economic plastic recycling pathway that the top companies in polystyrene

have embraced. While GAIA says the company has not proven that it's

capable of recycling plastic on a commercial scale, Agilyx is planning to

expand its capacity across the U.S., Europe and Asia, in conjunction with

a number of petrochemical partners such as Americas Styrenics and INEOS.

The facility in Chicago that we're developing with INEOS Styrolution will

be 100 tons per day, ten times the size of our Tigard, Oregon facility.

And as we replicate those, the scale of our recycled styrene will begin to

have a significant impact on the market.

Cooper says the company hasn't run a life cycle analysis to see how its

recycled polystyrene compares to virgin polystyrene, but estimates the

process to be between 40 to 70 percent cleaner.

This number too is up for debate.

But it's more than just a disagreement over statistics .

Fundamentally, it's a disagreement over priorities.

Basically, there's not a consensus on whether chemical recycling will

represent an important part of the plastic waste solution or an expensive

distraction from what many believe ought to be the real priority, making

less plastic. There are people who embrace chemical recycling as an

emerging technology with an evolution path.

There are others more focused on reducing the amount of plastics that we

use as a country and as a world.

Not surprisingly, there's big policy disagreements as well.

For example, the fact that plastic industry groups enthusiastically

support chemical recycling while opposing policies like single-use plastic

bans or plastic taxes leaves many skeptical that the industry would ever

pursue eco-friendliness over profits.

The industry is investing so much money in chemical recycling because they

really want to convince us that they can continue to churn out ever large

quantities of plastic and solve the problem downstream.

Tangri and many other environmentalists believe that instead of pursuing

chemical recycling, the plastic waste problem is best addressed through

legislation, in particular Extended Producer Responsibility laws that

force plastic producers to bear the cost for the environmental impacts of

their products. There are proposals that would impose a tax on plastic

producers proportional to the environmental and health harm that they

cause. The idea is that this would lead to less plastics production

overall, drive growth in the market for plastic alternatives and

incentivize consumers to turn to reusable materials instead.

But many champions of chemical recycling support a more free market

approach. If virgin plastics cost more because there's a tax on them, that

helps us out. But I think that open market competition is really the true

way in the long run to foster the innovation and the efficiency to drive

higher recycling rates across all plastic types.

Cooper's position is shared by industry groups like the American Chemistry

Council and the Plastics Industry Association, who say that consumer

demand and corporate pledges will make recycled plastic an attractive

option, even if virgin plastic remains cheaper.

Others though, say legislation and chemical recycling both have a role to

play. Regulatory and governmental frameworks have really driven us to

where we're at the point now where there is an absolute demand to deal

with the issues of post-use plastics.

In the future, m aybe there won't be a need for plastics and we find a

better way of doing things.

But for the foreseeable, we are going to have plastics in the environment.

And so, what we do is already environmentally better.

It will ultimately get even better as time goes on.

But for now, serious doubts about chemical recycling's efficacy,

environmental footprint and scalability remain, leading many to withhold