Recycling is a fixed cost business – it does not vary with the price of oil or the price of natural gas – and the more willing potential customers are to pay on a fixed cost basis, to cover the collection, separation, cleaning, and re-pelletizing costs, the more recycled material will make it back into the cycle and not into landfill or pyrolysis. The pyrolysis technologies being discussed by the major polymer producers are a solution to the plastic WASTE problem, and they allow for a degree of recycling potentially, but they will never be able to bid waste polymer away from a mechanical recycling alternative if the buyer is willing to cover the costs. We have written extensively on these topics in our ESG and Climate reports and we would point readers back to Unwanted: Chemical Recycling – Necessary Now, Less So Later and the second section of True Blue: Not Green but Likely Good Enough.
See today's daily for coverage of what Eastman is seeing with recycled PET.
