Modernizing recycling can help keep the U.S. competitive

Why are plastics so essential to American manufacturing?

RE: The plastics industry supports nearly five million jobs in the U.S. and contributes $1.1 trillion to the economy — that’s trillion with a T. The industry has grown dramatically since the mid-2000s, contributing to automotive, healthcare, construction, packaging, clean energy technology and more. And there are places where we don’t even realize we’re using it, but it’s indispensable. For instance, this summer my father was in the hospital. Plastic helped keep him alive — his tracheotomy tube, his IV drips, the sterile instruments, they were all plastic. You don’t think of it, you don’t notice it, but plastic is there for all these amazing things.

What steps would you advise the federal government take to make our recycling systems more effective?

RE: The challenge with recycling is that our systems are not set up for all the different kinds of products being used today. Like many other kinds of infrastructure, they haven’t kept pace with technology. Mechanical recycling is essentially grinding, washing and melting. It’s not suited for complicated plastics, like a potato chip bag, which has seven layers of plastic and a layer of aluminum foil to keep the chips crisp. The existing mechanical infrastructure just can’t handle them.

On top of that, recycling is fragmented — what you recycle depends on your municipality. So this is someplace where the federal government could help, guiding cities and states on how to recycle better and creating national standards that they can aim for.

We also need policies that support a technology we call advanced recycling, which uses chemistry to break a product to its raw materials and turn it into plastic again. Advanced recycling could be used to recycle virtually any plastic. It’s very promising, but some states and jurisdictions have regulations that make it difficult for advanced recycling to compete. We’d like the federal government to create some reasonable rules to pave the way for more innovation and investment.

Lastly, we’d like to increase demand for recycled plastics. There’s already a strong consumer demand for this, but to pull even more plastic into the recycling system, we’d like there to be standards for recycled content in new products. Start with that, and the rest will follow.

So you’re talking about creating a circular economy for plastics?

RE: Exactly. To create a circular economy, you have to change the way you look at products. Instead of sending them to the landfill you keep them in a system where you reuse or remake them. 

Beyond reducing plastic pollution, moving to a circular economy would also create a big economic opportunity. We did an analysis which found that if just half of the plastics in municipal solid waste were diverted from landfills to recycling facilities, it could support the creation of more than 170,000 jobs. So recycling — it’s not just good for the environment — it would be an economic boost as well.

How can the United States help drive progress toward an effective global agreement to curb plastics pollution?

RE: Many people don’t realize that even though we generate a lot of plastic here, only a tiny portion of that enters the ocean. The U.S. has championed a global plastics agreement that underpins the idea that plastics should be designed for reuse and recycling, that they should be collected and sorted and turned into new products. A global agreement that sets some basic standards for the rest of the world for this stuff would be really effective.

It also creates tremendous opportunity for the U.S. to manufacture recycled product for the rest of the world. We have an opportunity to own the technology for advanced recycling and export it overseas, and a proper global agreement that opens up those markets to the U.S. would be a big step.

How can the recently proposed bipartisan Plastic Health Research Act help advance our understanding of microplastics?

RE: The media is moving faster than the science on this issue, and that creates some real challenges. You’ll see a headline about a report with a shocking conclusion, and you’ll find that the studies are very small or didn’t account for other factors. We’re big supporters of the Plastic Health Research Act. It directs multiple federal government agencies to expand and coordinate research on microplastics. It will also standardize research, including validated testing methodologies, to ensure that research is reproducible and that we get solid answers. Because our view is we need to let the science lead.

What does the future hold for the American plastics industry?

RE: I took this job because I saw that this industry is run by chemical engineers — they embrace change, they see opportunity in change. This industry sees a problem it’s willing to solve. It’s saying, “Hey, let’s get the policies right, and we, as an industry, are willing to put our best foot forward to try to solve this.”

I think that industry is a critical stakeholder because they contribute vital expertise to the equation. But I really think that there is an opportunity for industry, for government, for environmental groups, for all the stakeholders to come together and put in place some strong and effective ideas to limit plastic waste and make this industry more circular.

How can industry involvement accelerate progress on reducing plastic pollution?

RE: The most effective environmental laws and regulations are almost always the ones that happened when industry leaned in and said, “We’re not afraid of change — we just need the government to enable us to make that change.” To succeed, you need all stakeholders working together.