Shell’s massive plastics plant in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, started operations in late 2022

From LIVING ON EARTH, National Public Radio, Air Date: Week of June 30, 2023

Shell’s massive new ethane cracker plant in western Pennsylvania is sending polluted air and strange smells into the surrounding community. But a $10 million fine pales in comparison to the roughly $100 million a day that the company made in profits in the first quarter of 2023. Reid Frazier of the Allegheny Front discusses with Host Paloma Beltran the concerns of residents and a promised economic boom that hasn’t materialized.

TRANSCRIPT ~ BELTRAN: And I’m Paloma Beltran.

Even before it came online last year, the huge plastics plant Shell built on the banks of the Ohio River in Beaver County, Pennsylvania had problems with pollution. The plant is an “ethane cracker” that uses fracked gas to produce the common plastic called polyethylene, and it’s violated air quality rules and sent strange smells into the surrounding community. And although it has brought new jobs, a recent report from the nonprofit Ohio River Valley Institute suggests it hasn’t ushered in the economic boom that some anticipated. In May, Pennsylvania’s governor announced that Shell will pay a $10 million fine for its air quality violations. But that fine pales in comparison to the roughly $100 million a day that Shell made in profits in the first quarter of 2023. And the plant received a $1.65 billion tax credit over 25 years, the largest in Pennsylvania history.

BELTRAN: So, this Shell plant has been in the works for a long time. Can you describe it for us? How big is it, and how much plastic does it produce?

FRAZIER: It’s basically like a small city that they built to make plastic, there on the banks of the Ohio. At the top capacity, it will be able to make over three billion pounds of plastic every year. The greenhouse gas emissions from this facility are estimated to be the equivalent of 400 thousand cars on the road. So, it’s a pretty big greenhouse gas emitter, it’ll probably be, you know, one of the top few facilities in the state in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.

BELTRAN: Wow. And in May, you reported that Shell agreed to pay a $10 million fine after emissions from the plant violated state air quality rules. What were the violations, and what will the money be used

FRAZIER: Right, so the violations were for exceeding their state permit-allowed air pollution, essentially. They were allowed to pollute about 500 tons a year of volatile organic compounds. They basically exceeded that in September of 2022, when they had a lot of flaring, there were sort of equipment malfunctions, and when those malfunctions take place, they basically flare the gas as a way to get rid of it. And so that the gas doesn’t accumulate and cause an explosion. But when you do that you get rid of a lot of the pollution, but not all of it. So, in one month, they essentially hit their 12-month quota, even before the plant had started. And they’ve exceeded similar limits for carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, in subsequent months. And they’ve had other problems with air pollution. There was a release that caused benzene and volatile organic compounds to spike a couple months ago, workers reported headaches and irritation in their eyes, according to the company. There have just been a lot of problems. So, the state rolled all of these violations together into a $10 million fine. About half of the money goes to the state and half goes to the local area municipalities and such presumably to be done in — used in a sort of environmentally friendly or civic-minded way, but we don’t actually know what the money is going to be used for.

BELTRAN: Reid, you’ve been covering this project for a long time, and you’ve spoken to lots of people in Beaver County. How have community members responded to the plant?

FRAZIER: Well, obviously, a lot of people are upset that there is this ongoing pollution problem. I think most people hope that the company will clean its act up. There is a sort of acknowledgement that when you open up a big plant like this, there’s bound to be problems as you start bringing equipment online. That having been said, I think people were surprised by how much pollution has come from this plant. Even people who were big supporters of Shell coming to Beaver County. I talked to Jack Manning, who’s a Beaver County commissioner, so it’s like the local governing board. He actually used to work in the petrochemical industry in Beaver County. He’s basically said he’s still going to be supporting Shell, but they simply have to clean their act up. And these are his words.

MANNING: Well, I’ve also told people, if you cross a line that shouldn’t be crossed, we’re going to have a different conversation. And I can’t, I can’t defend you. And right now, nobody’s crossed that

FRAZIER: Other people are more upset, parents who’ve taken their kids to school on days when there were high benzene levels, and were understandably freaked out by the smell of gasoline in their backyard. That’s what one person told me. Somebody else reported that it smelled like burning plastic. And I think more than anything, ‘Wait, is this how it’s going to be for the rest of my life, if I stay here?’ This is the thought that a lot of people are having. But if you live like five miles away, you probably don’t experience this. And, they’re glad to see that there’s a plant with 600 workers there, and maybe they have friends or relatives who are working there or worked to build it and made a lot of money in construction. During the five or six years when it was under construction, there were something like six-to-eight thousand people working on it. So, it’s a mixed bag. I think the closer you are to the plant, the more you’re, worried about it.

BELTRAN: Of course, I mean, who wants to be smelling chemicals every day in their backyard? Some fossil fuel companies are looking to increase their foothold in the plastics industry as the world moves towards cleaner sources of energy. Is that pivot happening at all in Beaver County, or in Pennsylvania more generally?

FRAZIER: That remains to be seen. I think the Shell plant itself is an example of that pivot that you just described, where oil and gas companies are trying to figure out what they’re going to do in the next few decades, if people largely give up, gas-driven cars and such. And petrochemicals are a growing business still. There were plans for more of these to be built in the greater Ohio Valley region. There was one project that was on the docket in eastern Ohio. To date, it hasn’t been built, it hasn’t been approved. We’ll see if that changes in the next few years. But it’s unclear. Five or six years ago, it was thought that there would be five or six of these plants at some point, and now we’re not sure that’s actually going to happen in this region.

BELTRAN: In some ways, the world seems to be moving away from plastics. U.N. negotiators recently held talks over a potential treaty to address plastic pollution. But this plant is built to produce 3.5 billion pounds of polyethylene per year. What might that mean for pollution in Beaver County and

FRAZIER: We don’t know where this plastic is going to end up. It could end up overseas, actually. It could end up in North America, as plastic bottles or medical equipment or parts that go into vehicles, even electric vehicles. But we don’t know, that kind of information is not something that Shell is required to tell local regulators and local communities. But we do know that it’s likely that this plastic will be sent on railcars around the country. They have a massive rail yard with hopper cars, where they can just dump the nurdles, which are the little plastic beads. That’s the form that they produce. And so it seems pretty certain that there will be some rail activity related to these nurdles, and that they’ll basically go elsewhere.

BELTRAN: And we should mention that this plant is located barely a half hour’s drive from East Palestine, Ohio, where a freight train derailed in February and caused a toxic chemical spill. Has this shaped the way Beaver County residents are thinking about this ethane cracker?

FRAZIER: Definitely. The Shell plant, every few weeks, would flare up, or there would be gases, or they would have an exceedance of their pollution limits. And at the same time, you have this national calamity going on about 15 miles away. And the communities around the plant are also in — downwind of that East Palestine fallout. So, it’s kind of hard to escape, if you’re living there, all of this pollution.

BELTRAN: Do regulators or environmental groups have plans to address the plant’s pollution moving forward?

FRAZIER: I think the state has set up some guideposts for Shell. They have to submit plans for how they’re going to do certain things at the plant to prevent continued releases of these pollutants. But there’s no guarantee that this kind of thing won’t keep happening, and that Shell won’t keep paying fines when it does. You know, there’s a lawsuit that has been launched from environmental groups to kind of get the plant to stop polluting, and we’ll see where that goes. These groups can push on the regulator, and the regulator can push on the company, but it’s really up to the company to perform, get its processes in line with environmental regulations. The best people can do now is hope that that happens.

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See Also: Pennsylvania is just the latest sacrifice zone for the plastics industry, Kristina Marusic, Sierra Club, September 15, 2022

Shell ranks in the top 10 among the 90 companies that are responsible for two-thirds of historic greenhouse gas emissions. Its Potter Township (BeaverCounty) cracker plant is expected to emit up to 2.25 million tons of climate-warming gases annually, equivalent to approximately 430,000 extra cars on the road.

Plastic Pollution Crisis from “beyondplastic.org”

Article by Randi Pokladnik, Ph.D. (Environmental Scientist), 10/12/22

As consumers become increasingly aware of the health risks and environmental issues associated with a world drowning in plastics, the petrochemical industry is advocating another false solution to address the plastic crisis facing the planet: advanced recycling or chemical recycling.

Chemical recycling uses incineration processes including pyrolysis, gasification, and solvolysis to break down plastic waste. The industry claims this will make plastic production “circular” by using plastic to make more plastic and keeping hard-to-recycle plastic waste out of landfills. A 2019 study by the U.S. Department of Energy estimated the US discarded 44 million metric tons of plastic, and 86 percent of this plastic ended up in landfills.

The PR departments of the plastics industry and the American Chemical Council are working overtime to convince politicians and citizens that chemical recycling is the answer to the enormous problem of plastic wastes. However, like carbon capture and “blue hydrogen”, this process is just another way to greenwash an industry that is responsible for 400 million tons of plastic waste each year. From cradle to grave, the entire process of plastic production has a significant carbon footprint. Even the United Nations has declared plastic wastes as a serious threat to humanity and the planet.

By using the term “recycling” the industry is misleading consumers and decision-makers. Recycling means ‘”to return a material to a previous stage of a cyclic process.” If the waste plastic material was indeed turned back into a similar plastic, it would provide a benefit to the environment by reducing the need for fossil-fuel-based feedstock to create virgin plastic. But this is not the case with chemical recycling where the majority of plastic wastes are being converted and used as a fuel source.

The technology of chemical recycling can be grouped into two main categories: heat-based and solvent- based. There are two primary methods that use heat and pressure to break down the long chain plastic polymers: pyrolysis and gasification. Both apply high temperatures to the waste plastic in a low oxygen setting or an oxygen-depleted reactor. Solvent-based depolymerization is a bit more complicated as it relies on heat as well but also includes various steps and solvents to break bonds, to strip out impurities, or to retain in-tact polymers.

A study released in September 2022, shows that reuse and mechanical recycling of plastic packaging are both better choices when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions. “Emissions from mechanical recycling are lower than those from chemical recycling by a factor of 9.” The study also points out that reducing the amounts of unnecessary packaging will also help move the world towards a zero-emission economy.

Other factors to consider, aside from the fact that the majority of facilities are not truly recycling any plastic, are the large quantities of hazardous waste generated, the amounts of toxic air pollutants released, and the fact that facilities are “disproportionately located in communities of low income or people of color, or both.”

Agilyx, located in Tigard, Oregon is one of the few commercial-scale facilities in operation. It uses pyrolysis to turn polystyrene into the monomer styrene, which is used to make more polystyrene. Much of the styrene however is used as a fuel source. The plant released 500,000 pounds of hazardous waste in 2019. Styrene is made from benzene, a known carcinogen. PureCycle located in Ohio is also a large-scale hazardous waste producer with more than 2200 pounds of hazardous waste generated per month.

Chemical recycling requires a considerable amount of energy and obtains this by burning fossil fuels, thus adding more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. “In 2019 alone, the global production and incineration of plastic accounted for more than 850 million metric tons of greenhouse gases released to the atmosphere, approximately equal to the emissions from 189 five-hundred megawatt coal power plants.”

Additionally, when plastic is burned, the carbon portion of the polymer is combusted but other toxic additives used in plastic production remain in the residue. If the plastic is used for fuels or chemical feedstocks, the non-combustible materials will remain intact. These toxins can be carcinogenic or endocrine disruptors and include: dioxins, furans, heavy metals, flame retardants, PAHs, VOCs, phthalates, bisphenol A, chlorine and fluorine. The “EPA provides little information about emissions and relies heavily on self-reporting by the industry.”

The American Chemistry Council has promoted chemical recycling and is “actively trying to influence state and local governments and decision-makers to approve new plastic expansion projects, remove regulatory obstacles, and award public monies or tax breaks to pass some of the needed investment on to taxpayers.” The ACC and other trade associations support bills which would allocate money (HR 5115) for recycling infrastructure including chemical recycling as well as funding dollars for research (HR 7728) on the technology.

A 2020 Greenpeace report “Deception by the Numbers” looked at financial investments for 51 chemical recycling projects. They found since 2017, $506 million had been awarded via public funds such as bonds, loans, grants, tax credits and other incentives. Of that $506 million, “89 percent was spent on waste-to-fuel/plastic-to-fuel.” Taxpayers are not paying for plastic recycling but rather paying for fuels for the petrochemical industry.

One of the major sticking points when it comes to regulations is the classification of chemical recycling. It is being defined as a manufacturing process rather than a waste incineration process. This means facilities are subject to less stringent air and water quality requirements. Currently, there are twenty signed state laws, including HB 166 in Ohio and SB 4084 in West Virginia, that redefine waste to exclude “advanced/chemical recycling”. One of the few states to kill an industry-backed bill was Rhode Island. A June 27, 2022 issue of “Plastic News” reported that two senior Democrats had “significant questions about the bill.” Environmental groups in the state argued that the state should focus on reducing single use plastics. The Conservation Law Foundation said “there was no evidence to support the claim that new plastics were being made, and instead materials were being burned creating climate-changing gases and air pollution.”

A final concern with these dangerous facilities is where they are located. In most cases, poor communities of color seem to be the sites for the majority of waste to energy plants. You will not see a chemical recycling facility in a rich suburb. Many lawmakers admit this is clearly a case of environmental injustice. They are writing and passing laws hoping to address the disproportionate amounts of hazardous facilities, like chemical recycling, located in poor communities, near schools, close to water sources, and adjacent to parks and public lands. (Rhode Island HB 5923).

SOBE Thermal Energy Systems is proposing a “recycling facility for tires and plastics” in Youngstown, Ohio. Basically, they will be using gasification to create a fuel that will be burned to create steam to heat some downtown buildings.

When the CEO of SOBE, Dave Ferro, was questioned about this facility his reply was, “his plant would be as clean or cleaner than natural gas.” Any peer reviewed analysis of the incineration of plastics/tires will point out the toxic air pollutants created in the process (dioxin and furans) as well as all the plastic additives that will not be fully destroyed. This facility will subject the community to a constant stream of toxins in their air, land and water. I urge anyone who thinks this is a good idea to do the research, read the scientific studies. Do not buy into industry claims that this is recycling. It is simply a dirty waste-to-energy project.

Shell cracker on Ohio River will produce substantial air pollution

From the Eyes On Shell Watchdog Team, Beaver County, PA, June 8, 2022

It was great to have many of you on the June 1st “Eyes On Shell Watchdog Team” Zoom meeting! Thanks for participating because watching Shell closely is especially important now.

As discussed at the meeting, we expect Shell’s cracker to be starting up in phases over the next few months and as early as July. During startup, before the plant comes fully online (by late 2022 or early 2023, according to Clean Air Council), we can expect significant emissions.

We can’t predict exactly the amount or timing of startup emissions. Emissions during Startup, Shutdown and Maintenance may be slightly greater than when they are running in a Steady State, but they still cannot exceed their Total Permitted Amount without incurring an infraction. We have examined the list of chemicals permitted as emissions and how much of each Shell can release during the year.

For the June 1st meeting, many thanks go to Rachel Meyer for her “Health Impacts of Oil and Gas Infrastructure” presentation. Rachel posted the following related links:

>>> The Fractracker Threat Map allows you to see how close you live to oil and gas facilities, and at Fractracker.org you can find out more about the organization that creates so many good maps.

>>> The National Energy and Petrochemical Map shows just how many pipelines there are across the whole country.

Rachel Meyer closed with this comment: Thank you for listening to my presentation! I would love to hear from you. Rachel Meyer ~ rmeyer@momscleanairforce.org

Terrie Baumgardner, who works with Clean Air Council (CAC) as Outreach Coordinator for Beaver County, closed the meeting with a preview of CAC’s Good Neighbor Wishlist. As we approach the point when the cracker will start turning fracked gas into 1.6 million metric tons of plastic pellets per year, Clean Air Council is asking residents to urge Shell to justify its claim of being a “good neighbor” by doing more to protect the community than what is legally required. The specific steps that residents, starting with EOS participants, can ask Shell to take are summed up in the Wishlist–a scaffolding for actions to discuss in future meetings.

Terrie also asks this of EOS participants: Please contact me if you live within a few miles of the plant and would like to find out more about hosting a PID (Photoionization Detector) for air sampling during a malodor event like the September 2021 maple-syrup smell one in Beaver. Her email is ~ tbaumgardner@cleanair.org.

A really good, wide-ranging discussion facilitated by Dr. Cliff Lau included information about Beaver County’s Local Emergency Preparedness Committee (LEPC) and an appeal to participants to attend the quarterly LEPC meetings.

We are also looking for someone to host a Breathe Cam, which will help us watch for emissions from different parts of the Shell petrochemical facility so we can better understand what is in our air.

Aerial photographer and blogger Bob Donnan was a great contributor to the June 1st meeting. For Bob’s remarkable weekly selection of petrochemical alerts and images, please see here.

Before our next EOS meeting on Wednesday, July 6, we need to begin to pull together your journaling observations. We’re also getting ready to train participants for and to place both monitors and bucket air samplers. If you’re a Watchdog Team member who has completed our surveys and indicated your interest in hosting, you will be contacted about next steps.

Our next Eyes On Shell Watchdog Team meeting will be in early July.

>>> Nora Johnson, Secretary, Beaver County Marcellus Awareness Community (BCMAC)

High temperature cracking consumes fuel creating GHG & pollutants

From the Spring 2022 Newsletter of Concerned Ohio River Residents, WV – OH – PA

The Thai company, PTT Global Chemical America returned $20 million to the state of Ohio since they did not meet the deadline set forth in the agreement they made with the state years ago. They have not started construction and their air permit with Ohio EPA expired in Feb. 2022 as well. The state gave the company around $70 million total to prep the site in Dilles Bottom, OH to build the massive ethane cracker/plastics plant, and now that they had to return a good portion of it, many are questioning even more if the plant will ever get built.

“PTTGCA’s decision to let the air permit expire is the latest indicator that the project is extremely unlikely to move forward, and certainly will not be moving forward any time soon,” said Megan Hunter, senior attorney at the Chicago-based EarthJustice advocacy organization. “We are thankful that at least for now, the community is safe from the air pollution that would come from the facility.”

“Currently in the global economy, there is a massive overcapacity for the production of ethylene and polyethylene,” said Sean O’Leary, senior researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute. “There’s been massive build-out along the Gulf Coast, and there’s also been major build-out in Asia, particularly in China. The competitive atmosphere is a pretty daunting one.”

What does this latest news mean for the Ohio Valley? No one is for certain, but we will keep you updated as we learn more about the situation. We should continue to push our elected officials to move on to some type of development that is sustainable and healthy, rather than extractive and dirty. Let’s come together in a positive way and create the future we want to have in the Ohio Valley.

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Lyondell Basell to shutter Houston oil refinery in exit from refining

From an Article by Erwin Seba, Reuters News Service, April 21, 2022

HOUSTON, April 21 (Reuters) – Chemical maker Lyondell Basell Industries will permanently close its Houston crude oil refinery by the end of 2023. The decision comes after two failed attempts to sell the plant and the closing of five U.S. refineries in the last two years. Refining until recently has been beset by high costs and low margins.

“After thoroughly analyzing our options, we have determined that exiting the refining business by the end of next year is the best strategic and financial path forward,” said Ken Lane, interim chief executive. The refinery, which makes gasoline, diesel and jet fuel, will remain in operation and the company will continue to seek potential transactions and/or alternatives for the roughly 700-acre site on the Houston Ship Channel.

The company earlier took a $264 million impairment charge as part of its decision to exit refining. In the past 10 years, Lyondell has twice mounted efforts to sell the 263,776 barrel-per-day refinery but failed to conclude a deal.

John Auers, executive vice president of Turner, Mason & Co, a Dallas-based energy consultancy, said Thursday’s announcement means “there will definitely be people knocking on the door” to look at the refinery. “The refinery could sell for a significant amount,” Auers said. “I certainly don’t expect it to close given this statement.”

Lyondell said the refinery, once the anchor of its supply chain as a regional chemical company, no longer fit with its global petrochemical production. “While this was a difficult decision, our exit of the refining business advances the company’s decarbonization goals, and the site’s prime location gives us more options for advancing our future strategic objectives, including circularity,” Lane said. Circularity refers to efforts by plastics manufacturers to increase spare finished plastics from landfills and return them to the supply chain for chemical plants.

Kindle electronic edition now available at Amazon.com

From the Publisher’s Weekly Review, Amazon Website, Spring, 2022

As a sequel to “Notes from a Dying Planet, 2004-2006,” Brown’s eye-opening and often terrifying survey explores what has happened to Earth regarding overpopulation, mass extinction, and climate change in the last two decades.

Aiming to provoke action, Brown painstakingly– and unstintingly– lays out the evidence, drawn from hundreds of articles and studies, of what he calls the “planetary death,” detailing the uptick in extreme weather and climate-related catastrophes, the warning signs that too often languish unheeded, and the likely increasingly horrific disasters we can expect in the future. While he never sugarcoats anything, Brown also offers guidance to steps that readers can take to mitigate these compounding dangers — if we as a species really do want to continue living on the planet we call home.

Brown’s core message — that we have very little time to make massive, life-altering changes in order to save life on the planet as we know it — is delivered alongside copious links covering topics that range from media misinformation to political movements. He never shies away from his fears that we have gone too far as a species to be able to reign in the incredible damage already done, which means the book may prove too wrenching for readers who prefer a sunnier outlook.

Brown sounds a resonant alarm about what’s likely to come if immediate action is not taken, and his advice about alternative personal habits and choices that any of us can make are welcome, though some of the recommendations are challenging. Brown suggests humans stop procreating, arguing “there will be enough younger people to carry on due to accidental pregnancies and births,” and he advises an immediate end to mass tourism that results in unaffordable ecological damage. His writing will spark a fear for the future, but readers will walk away empowered to make personal changes to thwart some of the most dire consequences of resource waste and pollution.

Takeaway: A stark analysis of the threats to our planet, with a provocative call to action for environmentally aware readers.

–
REFERENCE~ “NOTES FROM A DEAD PLANET: Please Prove Me Wrong,” by Paul Brown, PhD

Steam Cracker Chemical Plants are huge and profitable using cheap ethane, and emit millions of tons of carbon dioxide plus ....

From an Article by Chase Rogers, Corpus Christi Caller Times, March 24, 2022

SAN PATRICIO COUNTY — Years after selecting the Coastal Bend as the site for its new ethylene cracker plant, ExxonMobil and Saudi Basic Industries Corp. held a ribbon-cutting ceremony marking the startup for the new facility. Nearly 300 people attended the Wednesday event, which marked the “successful startup” of the $7 billion Gulf Coast Growth Ventures facility located on a 16-acre plot of land near Gregory in South Texas.

The facility progressively began operations last year, producing materials used in packaging, agricultural film, construction materials and clothing. The operation includes a 1.8 million metric ton per year ethane steam cracker, two polyethylene units capable of producing up to 1.3 million metric tons per year, and a monoethylene glycol unit with a capacity of 1.1 million metric tons per year.

“I can say with 100% confidence that Gulf Coast Growth Ventures is a very, very special facility built in a very, very special place. … We couldn’t have done it without you, the people in this room,” GCGV president and site manager Paul Frisch told the attendees, which included representatives from each of the companies, community leaders and elected officials.

Construction on the facility began in 2019 after the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality granted GCGV permits following a contested case hearing, wherein concerns were raised by environmental groups and local residents.

The construction process of the facility produced an estimated 6,000 construction jobs. Now completed, the manufacturing plant currently employs more than 600 full-timers, Frisch said.

While ExxonMobil and SABIC have partnered for 40 years on petrochemical projects, Gulf Coast Growth Ventures represents their first joint venture in the Americas. Ownership interests in GCGV are evenly divided with 50% to ExxonMobil and 50% to SABIC. ExxonMobil is the site operator, according to a GCGV news release.

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American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) ~ Pittsburgh Local Section Event

“Completing Construction of Shell’s New Ethane Cracker in the Ohio River Valley at Monaca, PA”

DATE & TIME: Wednesday, April 6, 2022 ++ 6:00 to 9:00 pm

Agenda: 6:00 pm – Registration & Networking, 6:30 pm – Buffet Dinner, 7:15 pm – Presentation, 8:00 pm – Q&A

The Hilton Garden Inn was built in 2019 on a bluff overlooking the $6 billion construction site where workers are completing construction of this new facility. The hotel is located about 1/2 mile from the Monaca exit (39) on I-376, about 10 miles north of the Pittsburgh Airport.

Come for a great meal and an indepth discussion about how this large plant was designed and built. It has been reported that this is the largest single construction project ever in Western PA.

For more information about this project, see articles at:

Shell Polymers … State Impact PA … Wikipedia

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BASF and partners using pyrolysis process (Beware of CO2).

From an Article by Karen Laird, Plastics News, Feb. 16, 2022

Chemical recycling is setting itself up to be a very big player in the future. German consulting firm Ecoprog GmbH says that as of the end of 2021, there were more than 90 chemical recycling projects in various stages of development worldwide.

More than 20 plants were in operation, although, the study said, most were not commercial plants but mainly served to advance the knowledge of this technology. [So called “pilot plants” or “demonstration facilities.”]

Chemical recycling is a topic of controversial debate within the waste management sector. Supporters argue that in the future, chemical recycling will allow plastics of all kinds to be recycled without downcycling. The element various technologies have in common is that they enable the recovery of contaminated and mixed waste streams that currently cannot be recycled mechanically. That considerably expanda the range of potentially circular plastics.

Critics mainly find fault with the high CO2 emission rates associated with chemical recycling. They also fear that waste streams are being diverted from a more climate-friendly mechanical recycling process in order to be chemically processed.

Controversy aside, the chemical recycling space is a dynamic one, with the overwhelming majority of new projects in planning in Europe. This market development is being driven, said the study, by the potential to recycle a far broader range and quality of plastics combined with the various quotas and targets for recyclability and recycled content use.

However, for this to truly impact on these targets, chemical recycling must first be recognized in the waste hierarchy, the study points out. That is the move favored by the coalition German Traffic-light. Also, planned projects are not the same as executed projects, especially where investments of the magnitude needed for the realisation of a chemical recycling plant are concerned.

Moreover, challenges, such as high energy consumption and uncertainty regarding various technical issues, remain to be overcome. This relates in particular to the purification of the output from depolymerization, such as pyrolysis oil, from contaminants and additives. The discussion about the political classification of chemical recycling is other factor threatening to hinder its implementation.

Regardless, the report concludes that chemical recycling is “a potential key technology in the future production of plastics,” able to generate “large market shares” in the coming years.

These technologies will mainly affect the business model of today’s raw materials producers and the mineral oil industry, which currently supplies the fossil-based building blocks for the plastics industry to these raw materials producers.

This explains the interest of these companies in chemical recycling and why they are the ones that are particularly active in exploring these technologies.

Other active players in the sector are waste management companies – who provide the waste material streams required – and start-ups, whose founding ideas relate to the technical aspects of the process.

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“Trend Study – Chemical Recycling” by ecoprog examines the technical fundamentals, market factors, development status, plant inventory, projects and competition in the field of chemical recycling worldwide. The study can be ordered at: www.ecoprog.de

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SEE ALSO: BASF, Quantafuel and REMONDIS want to cooperate on chemical recycling of plastic waste. Pyrolysis oil derived from plastic waste is fed into BASF’s Verbund production, thereby saving the same amount of fossil resources, April 30, 2021

BASF, Quantafuel and REMONDIS have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to jointly evaluate a cooperation in chemical recycling including a joint investment into a pyrolysis plant for plastic waste. It is intended that REMONDIS, one of the world’s leading waste and water management companies, supplies suitable plastic waste to the plant, and BASF uses the resulting pyrolysis oil as feedstock in its production Verbund as part of its ChemCyclingTM project. Quantafuel intends to provide the technology and to operate the plant. The company is a specialist for the pyrolysis of mixed plastic waste and the purification of the resulting pyrolysis oil; the technology is jointly developed and being held with BASF. The location of the pyrolysis plant will be evaluated together.

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SEE ALSO: TotalEnergies to use recycled feedstock from Honeywell, Plastics News, February 17, 2022

Honeywell International has agreed to supply TotalEnergies with recycled polymer feedstock from a chemical recycling facility it is building with Sacyr in Spain. “Plastics demand will continue to grow, so it’s critical to create a linkage between waste management and plastics production to strengthen a circular flow of plastics,” said Honeywell executive Ben Owens.

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SEE ALSO: New catalytic hydrocracking tech made for mixed plastics, Plastics Recycling Update, February 16, 2022

A new catalytic hydrocracking process out from a team at Johns Hopkins University turns mixed plastics into a mix of benzene, toluene and xylene, or BTX, that can be used in polystyrene, polycarbonate and other applications. The team is launching a new startup known as CUPTech to bring the technology to market.

Plastic waste on beach in Panama, Central America

>>> From an Article by Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch.com, January 18, 2022

PHOTO ~ Plastic pollution in Panama, an example of the conditions around the Earth.

Humanity is currently releasing more chemical and plastic pollution into the environment than Earth can support.

That’s the conclusion of a first-of-its-kind study published in Environmental Science and Technology on Tuesday, January 18, which argues that the planetary boundary for novel entities has been exceeded by human activity. The researchers defined “novel entities” as manufactured chemicals that do not appear naturally in large quantities and have the potential to disrupt Earth’s systems.

“There has been a 50-fold increase in the production of chemicals since 1950. This is projected to triple again by 2050,” study co-author Patricia Villarubia-Gómez from the Stockholm Resilience Centre(SRC) at Stockholm University said in a press release emailed to EcoWatch. “The pace that societies are producing and releasing new chemicals and other novel entities into the environment is not consistent with staying within a safe operating space for humanity.”

In 2009, a team of researchers identified nine planetary boundaries that have led to a stable Earth for the last 10,000 years. These include greenhouse gas emissions, the ozone layer, forests, freshwater and biodiversity. The new research builds on this foundation by quantifying the planetary boundary for novel entities.

The researchers concluded that the boundary had been breached because production and release of plastics and other chemicals now surpasses the ability of governments to assess and monitor these pollutants.

“For a long time, people have known that chemical pollution is a bad thing,” study co-author Dr. Sarah Cornell of the SRC told The Guardian. “But they haven’t been thinking about it at the global level. This work brings chemical pollution, especially plastics, into the story of how people are changing the planet.”

Scientists have previously concluded that humanity has exceeded the planetary boundaries for global heating, biodiversity loss, habitat loss and nitrogen and phosphorous pollution. The researchers noted that there are around 350,000 different types of manufactured chemicals on the global market, with almost 70,000 introduced in the last decade. Among them are plastics, pesticides, industrial chemicals and pharmaceutical products.

Plastics are especially concerning, the study authors said. They now weigh more than double the mass of living animals and around 80 percent of all the plastics ever produced persist in the environment instead of being properly recycled. Further, plastics are made up of more than 10,000 other chemicals that can enter the environment in new combinations when they degrade.

In order to address the risk posed by plastics and other chemical pollutants, the study authors argued that it is important to curb their production and release into the environment.

“We need to be working towards implementing a fixed cap on chemical production and release,” study co-author Bethanie Carney Almroth from the University of Gothenburg said in the press release.

They also supported calls for a circular economy. “That means changing materials and products so they can be reused not wasted, designing chemicals and products for recycling, and much better screening of chemicals for their safety and sustainability along their whole impact pathway in the Earth system,” Villarubia Gómez said in the press release.

Comments needed on water pollution potential of complex plastics industry

New Year Greetings from the Concerned Ohio River Residents (CORR), January 17, 2022 ~

As we are all weathering the winter storm and (hopefully) enjoying the snow, we ask that you take a couple actions to help protect the Ohio River today. The PTT Global Chemical ethane cracker/plastics plant proposed for Belmont County, OH (just 5 miles south of Shadyside) is still on indefinite hold.

They still have not announced a Final Investment Decision, and have been stringing along residents and decision makers for far too long – almost 7 years. Despite the fact that the future is still uncertain for this major polluting facility, they still have applied to renew their water pollution discharge permit with the state of Ohio – a move that does not necessarily indicate the project is moving forward.

We need you to take action today to help us tell the state of Ohio that enough is enough.

The Ohio River serves as a drinking water source for 5 million people with 23 water supply intakes located downstream from the proposed facility, including the drinking water intake for the city of Cincinnati. The closest water supply intake to the site of the proposed PTTGCA facility is in Sistersville, WV only approximately 30 river miles downstream.

Recent research has found that existing petrochemical facilities are already permitted to pollute 500,000 pounds of toxic discharge into the Ohio River. The PTTGCA plant would further exacerbate this problem. The Ohio EPA did not do an antidegradation review before issuing the permit the first time – something they should have done to see how the extra load of toxins would impact the River.

Additionally, the Ohio EPA put out the public notice for this water discharge permit renewal on December 20th – during the holidays – a time when people are not paying attention to these kinds of things, therefor we also need to ask for an extension to the comment period and for a public hearing.

Comments are due by this Wednesday, January 19th. Please submit your comment today. Click this link to open a document with a full comment that you can copy/paste into an email to the Ohio EPA.

Please insert your own unique comments as they carry even more weight than just submitting the generic comment. But, if you don’t have the time, just sending this language is helpful! Tell them your story about living along the Ohio River or why you care.

Send comment to the following three (3) email addresses: HClerk@epa.ohio.gov, Nicholas.McGovern@epa.ohio.gov, Ariel.Ruth@epa.ohio.gov

Please insert the following text into the subject line of the email:

Re: PTTGCA Application No.: OH0144967 Public Comment

Please also bcc our group so we know how many comments were submitted! Our email address is: general@concernedohioriverresidents.org

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SEE ALSO: PTTGC Ethane Cracker Project for the Mid-Ohio River Valley is Stalled, — FrackCheckWV.net, September 24, 2020

SEE ALSO: FIDdlesticks: Why PTTGC can’t make up its mind — Sean O’Leary, Ohio River Valley Institute, June 24, 2021

Plastics in streams, rivers and the ocean are contaminating & killing marine life

From an Article by Brett Wilkins, Common Dreams News, December 1, 2021

The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine study found that the U.S. is responsible for about a quarter of the plastics that enter the world’s oceans each year. As the world’s leading marine plastics polluter, the U. S. should devise a “national strategy” by the end of next year to address the crisis, according to a new report published Wednesday by the National Academies.

The congressionally mandated report — entitled “Reckoning With the U.S. Role in Global Ocean Plastic Waste” — revealed that at least 8.8 million tons of plastics enter the world’s oceans each year, with about a quarter of that amount coming from the United States.

“Plastic waste is an environmental and social crisis that the U.S. needs to affirmatively address from source to sea,” Monterey Bay Aquarium chief conservation and science officer Margaret Spring — who chaired the study committee — said in a statement.

“Plastic waste generated by the U.S. has so many consequences,” she added, “impacting inland and coastal communities, polluting our rivers, lakes, beaches, bays, and waterways, placing social and economic burdens on vulnerable populations, endangering marine habitats and wildlife, and contaminating waters upon which humans depend for food and livelihoods.”

The report lists six steps that can be taken to begin to address the marine plastics crisis:

1. Reducing plastic manufacturing—especially for single-use and nonrecyclable products;

2. Innovating design and materials to develop substitutes that degrade more quickly or can be more easily recycled or reused;

3. Decreasing waste generation by reducing the use of disposable plastics;

4. Improving waste management including infrastructure, collection, treatment, leakage control, and accounting;

5. Capturing waste in the environment; and

6. Minimizing the maritime disposal of plastics.

The marine conservation group Oceana said in a statement that “there isn’t a place on Earth untouched by plastic.”

“Plastic has now been found everywhere, including in the most unexpected places: Arctic sea ice, the Mariana Trench, air in the remotest of mountains, rain in our national parks, and our food, including honey, salt, water, and beer,” the group continued. “Scientists are still studying what all this means for human health. With plastic production growing at a rapid rate, increasing amounts of plastic can be expected to flood our blue planet with devastating consequences.”

Oceana plastics campaign director Christy Leavitt said that “we can no longer ignore the United States’ role in the plastic pollution crisis, one of the biggest environmental threats facing our oceans and our planet today.”

“This report shows that much of the plastic waste that threatens critical ecosystems, wildlife, and human health around the globe originates here in the U.S., and our country’s leaders have a responsibility to change that,” she argued.

“A national solution is already mapped out, thanks to the introduction of the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act earlier this year,” Leavitt continued, referring to a bill sponsored by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-Calif.). “Now it’s time for members of Congress to pass it,” she added, “so we can stop wasting time with inadequate solutions and finally tackle the plastics problem with the comprehensive approach and source reduction it requires.”

The report comes less than two weeks after the Biden administration — in sharp contrast to the Trump era — announced support for developing a global treaty to tackle marine plastic pollution, a move that was applauded by environmentalists.

Suggested Citation — National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2021. Reckoning with the U.S. Role in Global Ocean Plastic Waste. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.https://doi.org/10.17226/26132. $60.00 paperback.

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See Also: Great Pacific Garbage Patch Becomes an Ocean Habitat for Coastal Species — Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch, December 02, 2021

The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, or the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch,” stretches for more than 610,000 square miles between California and Hawai’i. The gyre hosts around 79,000 metric tons of microplastics, nets, buoys and bottles. And, in a surprising turn, coastal life.

Scientists writing in Nature Communications Thursday have found coastal animals like anemones, hydroids and shrimp-like amphipods living on plastic collected from the open ocean.

“Floating plastic debris from pollution now supports a novel sea surface community composed of coastal and oceanic species at sea that might portend significant ecological shifts in the marine environment,” the study authors wrote.