EPA’s Plastic Waste Recycling Proposal Said to Ease Permitting

An idea the EPA is floating—to stop classifying a plastics recycling technology as a type of incineration—would ease permitting for facilities turning wastes into products, according to a major trade association.

The permit-easing idea is part of a broader deregulatory rule the Environmental Protection Agency proposed last month. The EPA invited comment on whether it should remove pyrolysis units from its definition of “other solid waste incinerators” regulated by the Clean Air Act’s incinerator rules.

The idea would reduce regulatory uncertainty and resulting questions that can drag on the permitting process despite deadlines companies face to secure needed capital, according to Ross Eisenberg, president of America’s Plastic Makers, part of the American Chemistry Council. The proposal “would clear up permitting, and it would hopefully make getting those permits a little bit quicker,” he said.

Environmental groups oppose the idea, saying it would leave pyrolysis facilities’ air emissions uncontrolled by regulations, thereby endangering communities’ health.

The EPA plans to use comments, due May 4, to inform a rule it will develop for a growing industrial sector engaged in advanced recycling—breaking apart waste material molecules to make new products. Already, companies like Dow and Exxon Mobil Corp. are using technologies like pyrolysis, gasification, and depolymerization for advanced recycling.

Regulatory Reconsiderations

The EPA’s reconsideration of how to regulate pyrolysis is the latest twist in a years-long debate that’s resulted from the Clean Air Act’s failure to define the term. The EPA has, however, regulated pyrolysis as incineration for decades, codifying that policy in a 2005 rule.

Six of the 10 advanced recycling facilities operating at commercial scale in the US use pyrolysis, Eisenberg said, and emissions from all are controlled through multiple Clean Air Act rules and state permits.

The US pyrolysis industry, however, lags behind Europe and Asia, and reducing regulatory uncertainty would help remove an impediment to new facilities, he said.

Pyrolysis, which is used for plastics, tires, and plant material, uses heat with little to no oxygen to transform wastes into materials such as fuel, synthetic gas, chemical production feedstock oils, and a soil supplement called biochar. The global market for pyrolysis-produced oil is projected to grow from $758 million in 2026 to $1.16 billion by 2034, according to projections released last month by market research firm Fortune Business Insights.

In 2020, during the first Trump administration, the EPA proposed a rule to drop pyrolysis from its incinerator regulations. That rule wasn’t finalized. Instead, under President Joe Biden, the EPA issued an advance notice of proposed rulemaking in 2021 to get information about advanced recycling technologies. The agency withdrew that rulemaking in 2023 “to gain a better technical and regulatory understanding of these complex processes.”

Pyrolysis shouldn’t be regulated as incineration, because the technology the EPA referenced in its 2005 rule isn’t what’s used today, and what’s used doesn’t qualify as combustion, Eisenberg said.

Recovering Value

Incineration aims to reduce waste by turning it into ash, Eisenberg said. Pyrolysis companies are trying to recover as much of that material as possible to turn it into new plastics and other materials, he said.

The technology is particularly good for flexible plastics like diaper and potato chip bag wastes that can’t be mechanically recycled like soda and detergent bottles are, he said.

Redefining pyrolysis as manufacturing rather than incineration, which is essentially what the EPA is considering, would also make federal policy consistent with policies in 25 states including Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas, Eisenberg said.

Consistency between federal and state regulations could help when public policy debates over pyrolysis arise at the local level, he said.

The EPA’s idea also could be codified through legislation, the Recycling Technology Innovation Act (H.R. 6566), Reps. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) and Gary Palmer (R-Ala.) introduced, he said.

Health Concerns

But many environmental groups disagree with industry’s amiable view of pyrolysis.

Pyrolysis is a form of combustion because it combines heat and the oxygen that’s produced as plastics break down, said Jessica Roff, plastics and petrochemicals program manager with Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives, or GAIA.

The results include greenhouse gases and pollutants such as dioxins and carcinogens that pyrolysis facilities release into the atmosphere, she said.

These emissions often aren’t large enough to trigger other Clean Air Act rules, but are captured by incinerator regulations, Roff said.

That makes the incinerator rules essential to protect people, because the pollutants they regulate are harmful even at low levels, she said.

Benzene, formaldehyde, heavy metals, and other hazardous air pollutants released by pyrolysis are linked to cancer, respiratory, and other diseases, environmental groups said during a recent EPA hearing on its proposal.

Impacts Vary

Open discussions about pollution, impacts on local communities, and pyrolysis plants’ greenhouse gas emissions are justified given some industries’ past practices, wrote a research team led by Georgia Institute of Technology scientists in an analysis.

What’s often missing from those discussions, however, is measured data that documents the varied energy and environmental impacts that result from different types of plastic waste management and companies’ divergent capacities and processing procedures, they wrote.

Greenhouse gas emissions released by pyrolysis plants making ultralow sulfur diesel were 28% lower to 30% higher than emissions from using fossil fuel to make the same type of diesel, they said following their review of scientific literature.

The product being produced through pyrolysis and other advanced recycling methods also matters, according to a study by National Renewable Energy Laboratory scientists (NREL).

The economic cost and environmental impact of pyrolysis-produced plastics can be 10 to 100 times higher than producing virgin plastics, they said.

Yet, other studies have shown pyrolysis and other advanced recycling methods can be economically and environmentally competitive ways of producing feedstock fuels and chemicals such as benzene, naphtha, and methanol, NREL’s researchers said.