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The Delusion of Advanced Plastic Recycling

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.

Pacific Coast Producers told me it was “engaged in a small pilot pack of plastic bowls that contain post-consumer content with materials certified” by third parties, and that it “has made no label claims regarding these cups and is evaluating their use.” But this spring at an environmental journalism conference, an American Chemistry Council executive confirmed the industry’s preference for clean plastic as he talked about an Atlanta-based company and its pyrolysis process. (Nexus later confirmed that most of the plastic it used was pre-consumer and about a third was post-consumer, including motor oil containers sourced from car repair shops and bags dropped off at special recycling centers.)

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