There’s not a lot of good news when it comes to “advanced recycling”—or burning plastic trash to break it down to make chemicals and synthetic fuels. So it’s important to celebrate the wins. The community of Point Township, Pennsylvania, is currently celebrating after Encina, a chemical company, announced they would not move forward with a planned “advanced recycling” plant there. (Moms Clean Air Force covered the story in March.)
The now-canceled plant represented a new wave of “advanced” or chemical recycling projects. The Texas-based company planned to take in almost half a million tons of plastic waste every year to retrieve just four of 16,000 chemicals, including a known carcinogen called benzene. Those chemicals would have been put on railcars and transported to new customers along the Susquehanna River. For now the Susquehanna is safe, though this plant may just be moved elsewhere.
TELL CONGRESS: PROTECT OUR FAMILIES FROM PLASTIC INCINERATION POLLUTION
Sally Field, an activist with the Climate Reality Project and a community member, is thrilled. The canceled project would’ve brought the dangerous chemicals isolated and resold from plastic waste into her community, increasing the risk of local toxic spills and accidents. She worried that it had the potential to make her town “another East Palestine.” Field and her neighbors had pushed against the Encina project since it was announced in 2022, founding a group called Save Our Susquehanna to highlight air and water pollution. Their activism worked.
Announcing the cancellation, the Texas-based company said in a statement that it will pursue other chemical-laced, large-scale development projects in the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Southeast Asia. The work to stop this harmful industry and protect other communities is not over.
Field and other Pennsylvania activists worked for two years to get the word out about the health and safety concerns of “advanced recycling” and learned that most local residents either didn’t know about the project or assumed it was a done deal. So they ramped up local outreach: “We have a lot of differing perspectives in the Susquehanna Valley, but one thing we all agree on is that the river is the center of life here and must be protected. This is a vibrant and engaged community, and we look forward to working with our local representatives to bring the types of healthy and sustainable jobs to the area that this community wants,” says Field. While Encina pitched the cancellation of the plant as a business decision, Field believes their local opposition is the reason they bowed out. Other communities faced with similar plant proposals, take note.
“Advanced recycling” will only help the plastics industry while hurting consumers, communities, and the climate. Currently, the plastics industry has built 11 “advanced recycling” facilities in the U.S., but not all are operational and most are not running at capacity. EPA classifies some of these facilities as incinerators that generate hazardous waste. The American Chemistry Council, a lobbying group for plastic and petrochemical producers, has said the U.S. can support 150 such facilities. But in truth, they’ve proven to be economically and technically unviable, says Cynthia Palmer, Moms’ Senior Analyst for Petrochemicals.
Pennsylvania is one of 25 states that have passed laws allowing “advanced” or chemical recycling facilities to be exempt from regulations mitigating pollution, like those requiring scrubbers in smokestacks or more emissions monitoring for airborne pollutants. Currently, these state laws are in violation of the federal Clean Air Act, which requires air pollution standards for plastics incinerators like the now-canceled Encina facility. These state laws are an attempt to pivot a narrative on the global plastic waste crisis to a solution that is not a solution. Instead, “advanced recycling” allows more plastics to be created by petrochemical companies raking in billions in profits. Companies like Encina sell this type of recycling as a “circular economy” for plastics, but Palmer notes, this is an extreme form of greenwashing that creates even more health-harming pollution and accelerates climate change.
Save Our Susquehanna isn’t done working because Encina canceled one plant. Now the group aims to educate other communities about what they’ve discovered about “advanced” or chemical recycling. They saved their community, but they “don’t want to push [the industry] onto any other communities,” Field notes. “Chemical recycling is a toxic and unproven process and will only perpetuate the use of fossil fuels to make plastics. It will not solve the plastics overproduction crisis.”
Learn more about Moms’ work on “advanced recycling.”
TELL CONGRESS: PROTECT OUR FAMILIES FROM PLASTIC INCINERATION POLLUTION