Chemical Recycling of Plastics: Health concerns & technological limits

Chemical recycling of plastics is an umbrella term for processes that use heat, pressure, chemicals, and/or other agents (e.g., enzymes) to create chemical products from plastics. As the scale and scope of plastic pollution grows, there has been increasing interest in the potential of chemical recycling technologies to break down plastics into chemical products that can be used to make fuels, other chemicals, or new plastics. Proposals for, and construction of, chemical recycling facilities have increased globally, entailing significant public and private investments and potential impacts that range from the planetary to the local community scale.

Chemical recycling technologies include pyrolysis, gasification, solvolysis and solvent-based processes. Each technology has different requirements for energy and chemical inputs, and also generates different outputs. Along with chemical outputs that may be marketed as fuels or chemical feedstocks, chemical recycling processes variously generate air pollution, hazardous waste, and other wastes that must be disposed of.