From Seema Keshev
Go Green Vernon Hills & Lincolnshire and Go Green Highland Park submitted comments to the Lake County Board asking that they not consider chemical recycling technologies as a solution to manage plastic waste in the county. The board voted 16-4 to REMOVE language from Lake County’s Solid Waste Plan that would allow depolymerization, a from plastics to plastics recycling technology, as a solution to manage the growing amount of plastic waste.
Chemical recycling technologies have not proven to be effective and lack transparency. Reports from organizations including Natural Resources Defense Council, Beyond Plastics, and International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN) as well as media investigations (from Reuters, CBS and Climate News) report that a majority of the chemical recycling facilities are either operating on a modest scale or have closed down1 2 3. Two out of the 11 chemical recycling facilities in the United States closed down in 2024. According to Beyond Plastics, the remaining 9 are operating at partial capacity. The remaining facilities, even at full capacity, can process only 1.2% of the US plastic waste4. Moreover, chemical recycling facilities generate large quantities of hazardous waste and air pollutants that can cause cancer, damage the reproductive system and harm a developing fetus1.
Microplastics, tiny bits of plastics, are now found everywhere in our environment. Scientists have even found microplastics in the human placenta5 6, in newborns’ first stool, in breast milk7, in the blood8, the lungs, the brain as well as in human testicles. An investigative report by NPR and PBS found that executives from the plastic industry knew as early as the 1980s that it WOULD NOT be economically feasible to recycle plastic at a large scale9. Yet they continued to promote recycling as a solution, resulting in the plastic waste and health concerns we have today10.
Chemical recycling is yet another false solution that takes our focus away from reducing single-use plastics and puts forth solutions that have not proven to work. The solution to the plastic waste crisis is to first and foremost turn the tap off on problematic single-use plastics. We should all advocate for current legislation in the IL general assembly to ban foam foodware containers and single-use plastic bags, support beverage container deposit laws and extend producer responsibility laws that will hold producers responsible for packaging waste, educate consumers on health impacts from plastics and help move schools and restaurants to safe reusable foodware (like stainless-steel).
Thanks to the Lake County Board for rejecting chemical recycling technologies recently, and taking a bold step in 2021 by banning single-use plastics from all Lake County operations. We should continue on this path to reduce and refuse single-use plastics and not allow false solutions to the plastics crisis in our county.
1 NRDC: Recycling Lies – “Chemical Recycling” of Plastic Is Just Greenwashing Incineration (PDF)
2 The recycling myth: A plastic waste solution littered with failure
3 ipen-plastic-waste-management-hazards-en.pdf
5 Ragusa A, Svelato A, Santacroce C, Catalano P, Notarstefano V, Carnevali O, et al. 2021. Plasticenta: First evidence of microplastics in human placenta. Environ Int 146: 106274.
6 Zhu L, Zhu J, Zuo R, Xu Q, Qian Y, An L. 2023. Identification of microplastics in human placenta using laser direct infrared spectroscopy. The Science of the total environment 856(Pt 1): 159060.
7 Raman Microspectroscopy Detection and Characterisation of Microplastics in Human Breastmilk
8 Discovery and quantification of plastic particle pollution in human blood – PubMed
10 Microplastics are inside us all. What does that mean for our health? | AAMC
