Given the high stakes of this moment, I set out to understand exactly what the world is getting out of this recycling technology. For months, I tracked press releases, interviewed experts, tried to buy plastic made via pyrolysis and learned more than I ever wanted to know about the science of recycled molecules.
Under all the math and engineering, I found an inconvenient truth: Not much is being recycled at all, nor is pyrolysis capable of curbing the plastic crisis.
Not now. Maybe not ever.
Lisa Song
Selling a Mirage: The Delusion of Advanced Plastic Recycling Using Pyrolysis (ProPublica)
Scott Boehmer 