Per the Maryland Attorney General’s Office: Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown co-led a coalition of 15 Attorneys General supporting EPA’s proposed rules for “advanced recycling” facilities, but also urging the agency to go further in its proposed Significant New Use Rules (SNURs) for producing 18 substances used to make transportation fuels and refinery feedstocks – raw material for processing or manufacturing another product – from plastic waste. Under the new rules, the “advanced recycling” – a misleading term that primarily refers to two processes, pyrolysis and gasification, that break plastics down into their constituent molecules – of plastic waste containing certain chemicals and impurities known to be hazardous to human health and the environment would require EPA’s pre-approval.
Pyrolysis and gasification are processes that use significant energy, extreme heat, and a low-orno oxygen environment to break down plastic products. Those molecules can then, in theory, be used to build new plastic products, but the great majority of substances produced through these processes is, instead, burned or added to transportation fuels. The plastic waste used in these processes often contains chemical additives and impurities that are known to be harmful to human health and the environment. Studies indicate that those additives and impurities may wind up in consumer goods or otherwise become part of a facility’s air, water, or solid waste emissions, posing significant environmental justice concerns as petrochemical facilities are disproportionately located in minority and low-income areas across the country.
