The Delusion of “Advanced” Plastic Recycling
www.propublica.org
The plastics industry has heralded a type of chemical recycling it claims could replace new shopping bags and candy wrappers with old ones — but not much is being recycled at all, and this method won’t curb the crisis.

Turns out even the most “advanced” modes of plastics recycling are bullshit, just as 40+years of plastics recycling efforts before them.

  • becausechemistry@lemm.ee
    2·
    17 days ago

    There are alternatives to pyrolysis that are slowly coming online. They have their drawbacks – it’s certainly easier to chuck a bunch of mixed plastic into a reactor and heat it up until something happens – but they’re real.

    I worked on one of them for a few years. It’s pretty cool! They’re currently building a pilot plant to demonstrate the technology at scale.