Plastic Recycling Is Mostly Fictional. Trump’s EPA Approves.
A proposed solution to the plastic pollution crisis, "chemical recycling," is at best unproven and more likely disastrous for the environment. The EPA just removed the only regulatory obstacle to its widespread adoption.
With oil and gas in decline, fossil fuel companies are turning to plastics to survive. Dubious "recycling" schemes make endless plastic production look sustainable, and Trump's EPA is rewriting the rules to help. (Lori Van Buren / Albany Times Union via Getty Images)
The Trump administration recently removed a major roadblock for chemical recycling, an unproven set of technologies that the oil and plastic industries are pitching as a panacea to the world’s plastic pollution crisis. Now, amid an unprecedented lobbying push and with corporate allies ensconced in key regulatory agencies, the industries are clamoring for a nationwide buildout of chemical recycling facilities that experts say are highly polluting, disastrous for climate change, and almost entirely ineffective.
In promotional videos and policy fact sheets, often accompanied by professed commitments to a “circular economy” for plastic waste, these industries claim that sustainable recycling technologies — not limits on production — will solve the world’s plastic pollution crisis.
For decades, oil and gas companies have known that the majority of plastics — made from fossil fuel–derived chemicals — could not be recycled using traditional methods. But even as the industry faces state and class action lawsuits alleging deception, it’s now doubling down on a campaign to persuade lawmakers and regulators to embrace “advanced recycling,” or chemical recycling.
The term is a catchall for various chemical processes that convert plastic waste into chemicals and fuels, which could then theoretically be used to make new plastic and reduce reliance on virgin fossil fuels. The problem? There’s scant evidence that the method actually works — but there is evidence that it generates hazardous waste and toxic emissions, harming human health and the environment.
Fossil fuel companies are working hard to ensure that chemical recycling wins over the American public because plastic is one of Big Oil’s last lifelines. As the world’s demand for oil and gas decreases, major corporations are rushing to shift their investments to petrochemicals and peddle plastics to consumers. Meanwhile, millions of tons of plastic enter the ocean each year, and microplastics have been found virtually everywhere on earth, including inside the human brain.
The plastic industry’s largest lobbying group has set an ambitious goal of ensuring that 100 percent of plastic packaging in the United States is reused, recycled, or recovered by 2040. The current domestic plastic recycling rate sits at a measly 5 percent.
In July, President Donald Trump’s industry-friendly Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) removed one of the few regulatory hurdles confronting chemical recycling’s toxic outputs: a set of new rules proposed under President Joe Biden that would have required an additional risk review of eighteen plastic-based fuels produced from chemical recycling. Policy experts say the rules’ elimination could now clear the way for the nationwide buildout of chemical recycling facilities that the plastic industry desires.
The move comes as the plastic industry lobbies aggressively for regulatory rollbacks at both the state and federal levels — a push spearheaded in part by the same industry group whose former executives now staff the EPA.
More than a third of all US states have at least one proposed or operating chemical recycling facility, most of which perform plastic pyrolysis — a specialized process that breaks down plastics at high temperatures to create new chemicals. Critics say the process is just glorified incineration and that the toxic emissions it releases disproportionately impact marginalized communities, where chemical recycling facilities are frequently located.
Meanwhile, the industry is throwing millions of dollars into new chemical recycling projects. ExxonMobil is investing more than $200 million to expand a facility in Texas, and chemical recycling company Braven Environmental is developing a $145 million facility in the state with Koch Project Solutions, a subsidiary of the Koch family’s vast fossil fuel empire. The waste processing company Brightmark is plowing ahead with a $950 million facility in Georgia, despite community pushback and the recent bankruptcy of a similar plant in Indiana.
“We have booming pyrolysis across the country with woefully inadequate data about the threats to public health and the chemicals that are entering commerce as a result,” Jonathan Kalmuss-Katz, a staff attorney at the nonprofit environmental law organization Earthjustice, told the Lever. “I think the withdrawal of [this rule] will deprive EPA scientists of the information they need to protect public health and will deny EPA regulators and risk assessors the information they need to comply with their legal obligations.”
When Chemical Recycling Comes to Town
Fringed by shipyards, chemical plants, and Chevron’s largest US refinery, the residents of Pascagoula, Mississippi, have long dealt with adverse health impacts from industrial pollution. In 2023, ProPublica and the Guardian revealed that the EPA had given Chevron the go-ahead to add to the neighborhood’s toxic burden, authorizing the company’s facility in the area to make “climate-friendly” jet fuel from discarded plastics — with a one-in-four lifetime cancer risk for people exposed to the fumes.
Another plastic-derived Chevron chemical, an ingredient used to make boat fuel, carried a cancer risk so high that, according to an EPA analysis, everyone exposed to it continuously over a lifetime could expect to develop cancer. A community group in Pascagoula sued the EPA that April, seeking to halt Chevron’s chemical recycling operation and revoke the EPA’s consent order green-lighting the production of eighteen plastic-derived chemicals.
In response, the EPA proposed new rules under the Toxic Substances Control Act that would require manufacturers to notify the agency before producing any of the eighteen chemicals named in the suit. Regulators would then review the substances for “impurities of concern” and decide whether to require additional testing or safety requirements.
The EPA said in a 2023 press release that it had approved the plant’s production of plastic-derived chemicals without considering the full range of toxic additives they could contain. The plastic “feedstocks” fed into the recycling process are often made with carcinogenic dioxins, heavy metals, forever chemicals, flame retardants, and more.
“At the time they were approved, the companies provided some data on impurities, and these data showed there were no impurities of concern,” the EPA wrote. “However, EPA knew less about impurities that may be included in plastic-based feedstocks in 2015 and 2019 than it does today . . . Future consent orders for any new plastic waste–derived feedstocks would also contain requirements to address this issue.”
In December 2024, the agency withdrew its consent order for the Chevron plant entirely. Citing issues with its risk assessments, the EPA said in a court filing it would again review the chemicals involved and issue a new decision at a later date. Chevron did not respond to the Lever’s request for comment.
In an August 2023 fact sheet addressed to the Pascagoula community, Chevron disputed reporting on the one-in-four cancer risk posed by its pyrolysis-derived fuel. The risk, Chevron said, “was not for those living near the Chevron refinery in Pascagoula — it was for an unrealistic worst-case exposure scenario at airports. EPA has now confirmed that airport scenario would never actually occur, and it expects actual worst-case risks will be ‘vastly lower.’”
While the EPA’s new decision on the Chevron application is still pending, advocates fear that the agency’s latest announcement revoking the proposed rules signals that it is prepared to take an even more lenient approach to regulating Chevron’s plastics-to-fuel refinery — and chemical recycling writ large. On July 8, Trump’s EPA said it had withdrawn the proposed new use rules because the EPA’s initial Chevron consent order had been revoked.
Maria Doa, senior director of chemicals policy at the Environmental Defense Fund and a former EPA staffer, was skeptical of this reasoning. She noted that the EPA under the previous administration did not choose to revoke the new use rules when it withdrew the plant’s consent order in December. The rules “would apply to anyone who makes those same chemicals, whether it’s Chevron or somebody else,” she added.
“It’s not that they absolutely had to withdraw it,” said Doa. “The [significant new use rule] says nobody can make it if these toxic components are present, unless you go to EPA, and the EPA reviews it.”
The EPA declined to comment on actions taken by the previous administration, but a spokesperson wrote in a statement: “This Administration is committed to reviewing new chemicals in a way that follows the science and the law, protects human health and the environment, and allows innovation to thrive . . . . EPA is evaluating the pyrolysis process and the related alternative fuels and products to ensure we have all the necessary information and are using the best available science to assess [new chemicals].”
Since the underlying consent order was revoked, no companies can currently make the eighteen chemicals. But Kalmuss-Katz of Earthjustice said that the withdrawal of the proposed rules while the Chevron review is still pending is a “dangerous indication” of what the EPA may to do next.
“Withdrawing the proposed rules removes a critical safeguard and leaves the public exposed to high rates of cancer and other serious harms in the event that the chemicals are reapproved without a [significant new use rule] in place,” he said. “EPA proposed the significant new use rule because it acknowledged that it didn’t have the information that it needed to evaluate the safety of pyrolysis . . . . That data gap doesn’t go away merely because EPA has withdrawn the [rule].”
Industry groups, meanwhile, were quick to laud the EPA’s decision.
“We commend the EPA for its prudent decision to withdraw the proposed [significant new use rule] — a move that aligns with the broader goals of strengthening U.S. manufacturing and advancing a more circular economy,” Chris Rager, vice president of government affairs at the Plastics Industry Association, a lobbying group, said in a statement to Plastics News.
Ross Eisenberg, the president of the American Chemistry Council’s plastics advocacy wing, praised the announcement in a statement to the Lever, writing that the proposed new use rules had exceeded the EPA’s regulatory authority, lacked a scientific basis, and hindered investments in the chemical recycling field.
“The uncertainty and regulatory overreach created by the [significant new use rules] had already slowed progress and stalled investment in advanced recycling and the solutions needed to improve recycling rates in the U.S.,” Eisenberg wrote. “Advanced recycling is critical to scaling up a circular economy.”
Dismantling the Roadblocks
One week after the EPA canceled the proposed new use rules, Eisenberg traveled to Capitol Hill to pitch members of congress on the American Chemistry Council’s vision for chemical recycling. On July 16, Eisenberg and other industry leaders testified before the House Subcommittee on Environment at a hearing titled “Beyond the Blue Bin: Forging a Federal Landscape for Recycling Innovation and Economic Growth.” Eisenberg’s testimony stressed the importance of removing “regulatory roadblocks” hindering chemical recycling’s growth.
According to the Vinyl Institute, a lobbying group for manufacturers of PVC plastic and vinyl chloride, House Republicans were receptive to the industry’s message. In a blog recap of the hearing, Kevin Koonce, the Vinyl Institute’s vice president of government affairs, wrote that “House Republicans aligned with the chemical industry’s push to ease Environmental Protection Agency regulations on chemical recycling technologies.”
That effort has focused on lobbying the EPA to change the classification of chemical recycling under the Clean Air Act, the country’s primary federal air quality law, so that it faces less stringent environmental guidelines. Currently, pyrolysis is classified as waste incineration, but the industry argues that solid-waste rules are inapplicable to chemical recycling and the process should instead be regulated as manufacturing.
“This reclassification would reduce regulatory burdens and remove certain environmental permitting requirements,”wrote Koonce.
Solid waste incinerators are subject to Clean Air Act emissions limits for dioxins and furans, highly toxic chemicals often produced as byproducts of plastic combustion. Manufacturing facilities generally don’t have the same emissions requirements, nor do they have to conduct periodic performance tests.
The EPA proposed a rule to reclassify chemical recycling as a manufacturing process during Trump’s first administration, but it was withdrawn by Biden’s EPA in 2023. To the industry’s disappointment, the EPA declined to take action on the issue when finalizing its periodic review of air emissions standards for solid waste incinerators in June, but it left the door open for future regulatory action.
Revising the Clean Air Act classification isn’t the only issue on the plastic industry’s agenda. Last year marked the American Chemistry Council’s highest lobbying spend on record: The group shelled out more than $22 million to influence lawmakers, including to push for a chemical recycling bill in the House titled “Accelerating a Circular Economy for Plastics and Recycling Innovation Act.”
Along with chemical companies like Eastman and Dow, the American Chemistry Council’s lobbying wing represents fossil fuel giants like Chevron Phillips Chemical, ExxonMobil, Shell, and the Saudi petrochemical company Sabic.
These corporations’ lobbying dollars appear to be paying off. Trump’s EPA has already implemented various policies on the plastics industry’s wish list, including rolling back emissions tracking requirements and weakening standards for forever chemicals in drinking water. And now that two former American Chemistry Council lobbyists — Nancy Beck and Lynn Dekleva — hold key roles in the EPA office tasked with overseeing chemical safety, the industry could expect more regulatory wins in the future.
“Dr. Beck and Dr. Dekleva remain committed to being led by the science and following all applicable ethical guidelines,” said the EPA spokesperson. “President Trump made a fantastic choice in selecting these women to work at EPA. They are highly qualified, dedicated public servants, and are among the brightest minds in their field committed to upholding EPA’s mission of protecting human health and the environment.”
At the state level, meanwhile, plastic industry lobbyists have also found great success in advancing their desired rollbacks: Last year, Wyoming became the twenty-fifth state to reclassify chemical recycling as manufacturing.
An Oily Future
Since 2022, United Nations delegates from more than 180 countries have been meeting twice annually to hammer out a treaty aimed at tackling the global plastic pollution crisis. But negotiations failed on August 15, after six rounds of talks, with no clear path forward. At the center of the stalemate was a rift over recycling.
More than one hundred nations called for legally binding production caps on plastics, and many countries demanded increased restrictions on the toxic chemicals used to produce them. But the United States, alongside wealthy oil-producing nations like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, opposed banning chemical additives or reducing plastic production. Instead, these countries pushed for chemical recycling and greater plastic “circularity.”
“The U.S., Saudi Arabia, and a few oil-producing allies aim to dodge responsibility for the plastics they make and export by having the public pay for cleaning up their plastic waste and subsidizing plastic recycling to uphold the myth it is economically viable,” said International Pollutants Elimination Network Executive Director Bjorn Beeler, who attended the latest round of negotiations. “The oil and plastic industries plan to increase plastic and petrochemical production by 300 [percent] by 2060. Even if recycling infrastructure increased by 300 [percent], only 5 to 10 [percent] of plastics would be recycled.”
The American Chemistry Council, for its part, appeared jubilant that the talks had failed.
“[American Chemistry Council] applauds the leadership of U.S. negotiators and their unrelenting efforts to bring governments together around a global agreement on plastic pollution that will help unleash American innovation to solve this global challenge,” the lobbying group wrote in an August 15 statement.