The Recycling Industry's Dirty Secret

The petrochemical industry has long championed chemical recycling as the solution to the global plastics crisis. The pitch is straightforward: instead of sending plastic waste to landfill or incineration, break it down chemically back into raw materials and start again. Clean, circular, elegant. The reality is considerably messier. Chemical recycling works primarily through a process called pyrolysis. Plastic waste is heated in the absence of oxygen to produce an oil that can, in theory, be...