At the failed sixth round of UN talks to negotiate a plastics treaty, the petrochemical industry argued that recycling is the answer to the plastics crisis.
Although only 9% of the plastic ever made has been recycled, the industry maintains that a new range of technologies can solve the problem. These technologies are collectively known as chemical recycling, but the industry is attempting to rebrand them as ‘advanced recycling’, avoiding the use of that scary word, chemical! I prefer to call a spade a spade!
However, in the last six months alone, at least six chemical recycling projects have been closed or abandoned in Europe, resulting in the loss of 800,000 tonnes of processing capacity. In America, at least four projects have been lost, resulting in a loss of 800,000 tonnes over the past 18 months. There are only about 10 chemical recycling plants operational across the entire USA.
At the talks in Geneva, the industry was promoting the virtues of these technologies as the solution, while quietly closing them down! At least one closure was announced while the talks were in progress! Anyone would think the industry was giving the middle finger to the UN!
Most of these new technologies do use chemicals to break down plastics into their basic components, so they can be reborn as materials with almost identical properties to their virgin fossil fuel-based counterparts. Catalytic pyrolysis, solvolysis, hydrothermal, and dissolution recycling all involve the use of chemicals. Wgile pyrolysis and gasification mainly rely on heat and pressure. However, critics argue that most pyrolysis cannot be counted as recycling, as it simply creates fuel which is then burnt. In any event, all these processes consume significantly more energy when compared with mechanical recycling:
With this level of energy consumption, it is not hard to understand why the economics of many of these processes are questionable. There also remain technical challenges in developing many of these technologies at an industrial scale.
In any event, with production of plastics exceeding half a billion tonnes a year, the cancelled projects would hardly make a mark, let alone a dent, in the plastics crisis. We need action across the entire lifecycle of plastics, with production caps a critical element in such an approach. But wait, that is exactly what the UN Plastics Treaty was supposed to deliver, but after six junkets around the world, we are no closer to an agreement. Oil and gas-producing nations are resisting production caps, and the UN requires consensus for any agreement to be put in place.
But wait, there might be another round TBA – doing the same thing, hoping for a different outcome – isn’t that the definition of madness? Or perhaps the oil and gas-producing nations – Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the USA among them will have a change of heart and agree to limit production… yeah, right!