“Trump’s EPA has a plan to ‘unmake’ plastic waste”

“Trump’s EPA has a plan to ‘unmake’ plastic waste

Advanced recycling offers something conventional recycling never could — a way to truly undo plastic, breaking it apart piece by piece until nothing remains but the raw materials from which it was originally made. One of the most significant forms of this technology is pyrolysis, a process that uses high heat in a zero-oxygen environment to chemically dismantle plastic and convert it into pyrolysis oil — a material that is identical, or nearly identical, to oil refined directly from crude.

In other words, plastic isn’t just being reused — it is being unmade and reborn as a valuable raw material all over again.

I saw the potential of this emerging technology in person when I visited ExxonMobil’s Advanced Recycling operations at their Baytown Complex in September. Exxon has turned 50,000 tons and counting of hard-to-recycle plastic waste — which would have otherwise been incinerated or headed to landfills — into useful raw materials.”