Advanced Recycling Is a Fraud—And the Big Oil Plastics Industry Knows It | Common Dreams

This is just a new version of a sad and familiar story: the plastics industry's attempt to use the idea of recycling to protect its license to operate and continue producing ever-greater amounts of plastic.

May 11, 2025

At a chemical recycling conference last year, an industry consultant warned attendees that “[d]elays & setbacks ... open the door for an increasing number of reports & press articles expressing doubt & strong criticism about the industry’s claims.”

They were right.

Facing growing pressure to confront the plastic waste crisis, the plastics industry claims to have found a solution: "advanced recycling." But there is a huge divide between the plastics industry's public claims about the potential of advanced recycling to address the plastic waste crisis and the technical realities of chemical recycling processes.

All available information suggests advanced recycling won’t be able to address plastic pollution at a meaningful scale — and some of the most compelling evidence comes from people within the plastics industry. A new report I authored at the Center for Climate Integrity makes clear it’s not just environmental groups that are pointing out the limitations of this so-called new technology — it's the experts who know the industry best, including chemical engineers, consultants, trade organizations, and plastics producers themselves, who consistently undermine the industry's claims.

“The Fraud of Advanced Recycling” shows how the industry makes five key claims — all of which mislead the public.

It’s not just environmental groups that are pointing out the limitations of this so-called new technology — it's the experts who know the industry best...

First, the plastics industry presents advanced recycling as new and groundbreaking — like when Exxon CEO Darren Woods called it a "brand new technology" in 2022. It’s not new. The plastics industry has been trying to scale up chemical recycling to address plastic waste for more than 50 years to no avail. According to California’s plastic recycling deception lawsuit against ExxonMobil, virtually the same process Exxon is using today was patented by Mobil all the way back in 1978, and efforts in the decades since have faced predictable problems.

What  is  new is the name. The industry only started using "advanced recycling" in the last 10 years, marketing it as an amalgamation of every imaginable benefit of every distinct chemical recycling process with none of their respective downsides.

Second, the plastics industry claims that advanced recycling is scaling up to address the plastic waste crisis, even though experts point out that the same economic and technical limitations that have plagued chemical recycling for decades still hold true. Major plastics producers have made advanced recycling commitments, but none of them have a practical pathway to meeting them. Exxon has said that it will process 1 billion pounds annually by the end of 2026, but has processed a tiny fraction of that so far.

Experts have warned that there is not a viable pathway to scaling up for years. In 2017, consulting firm Accenture and the European Chemical Industry Council noted that “the ability to perform the process at industrial scale is still a technological challenge — and currently not economically feasible.” Just last year, the Association of Plastic Recyclers said that "much of the information promoting chemical recycling technologies overlooks the necessary design, collection, sortation, and end markets that need to be in place for any type of recycling to scale.”

As one expert consultant summarized, “we’ve had a few successes and a ton of failures; capacity has not developed as major projects have been delayed or cancelled.” These failures have left the industry with an “[u]rgent need for success stories,” in the words of another consultant.

The third key claim about advanced recycling is that it can address the problem of post-consumer mixed plastic waste that mechanical recycling can't. Dow, for example, says that advanced recycling allows for “recycling the unrecyclable.” But the reality is that particular chemical recycling processes are only suitable for particular kinds of plastics and can't handle contamination, meaning advanced recycling is subject to many of the same constraints that have limited the effectiveness of mechanical recycling.

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• Industry Association
• Industrial Equipment
• Waste Water Technology
• Technology & Solution Provider
• Association
• Raw Sewage Recycling
• Water Reuse & Recycling
• Solid Wastes & Wastewater Recycling
• Water Recycling
• plastic pollution
• plastic debris
• Plastic Ban
• Plastic Pollution
• Plastic waste
• Recycling and reuse