Plastics Pact says mechanical recycling should be prioritized over chemical – USA

Posted on December 21, 2025 by DrRossH in Plastic Recycling

Source: Plastics Pact says mechanical recycling should be prioritized over chemical – Plastics News

The U.S. Plastics Pact is arguing that traditional mechanical recycling of plastics should be prioritized over chemical recycling because it has a lower environmental impact, although the chemical processes offer opportunities to overcome current limits for recycling.

The Nov. 19 position paper from the pact, which counts major consumer brands and retailers among its members, attempts to set guardrails for companies and governments around when it’s best to use different plastics recycling technologies.

It doesn’t want chemical recycling to displace mechanical recycling or reduction and reuse strategies.

“Physical and chemical recycling should complement, not duplicate or replace, mechanical recycling and be used in instances where mechanical recycling is not feasible or insufficient,” the paper said. “While all recycling and manufacturing processes carry environmental impacts, physical and chemical recycling typically have higher footprints than mechanical recycling due to the use of solvents, chemicals and energy-intensive methods.”

The position paper argues that chemical recycling, including solvent-based processes that the report defines as physical recycling, has a clear role with hard-to-recycle materials like flexible plastic films, food contact packaging, textiles, durable goods and medical packaging.

The pact said the report came about after months of discussions among its members and review of policies from more than 20 business and environmental groups.

“Too often, these technologies are talked about in extremes — either as a silver bullet or as something to be dismissed outright,” said President and CEO Jonathan Quinn. “This position paper is exactly what the USPP is designed to do — bring activators together in a pre-competitive space to wrestle with hard problems and consider data-driven real-world solutions.”

The pact’s detailed 16-page report recommended that environmental justice considerations figure strongly into siting of chemical or physical recycling facilities, with meaningful involvement of nearby communities.

The group said it “strongly supports” the federal government resuming work to identify environmental justice communities and providing that information to companies to use in citing decisions.

The pact also called for national standards for measuring recycling, including the use of mass balance standards, and not allow plastics used for energy or fuel to count as recycled content.

It also said that any physical or chemical recycling processes should have a lower environmental impact that virgin plastics production.

In a statement from the pact, one company that uses solvent-based recycling processes said the technologies have a role to play in handling hard-to-recycle materials.

“As a physical recycler, we believe it is essential to define responsible parameters and to position these technologies as complementary within the broader system,” said Tamsin Ettefagh, chief sustainability officer for PureCycle Technologies. “With the right guardrails, we can scale solutions that prioritize material to material recycling, expand circularity, protect communities, and keep more plastic in the value chain—not the environment.”