New York Plastics Law Advances Amid Debate Over ‘Chemical Recycling’

Legislation that would reduce plastic waste in New York is advancing in the state Legislature amid a contentious debate over chemical recycling.

If it passes, New York would have one of the strongest controls on plastic packaging in the country and could reduce the amount of non-recyclable packaging in the state by 30 percent over the next 12 years. It would also require that packaging producers contribute funds to recycling and disposal efforts. 

The bill, the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act, stalled during the previous two legislative sessions. Among the sticking points for plastics producers is chemical recycling, an umbrella term for a variety of processes that use heat, pressure and chemicals to break down plastics after they’ve been used.

Under the law, chemical recycling would not be classified as recycling, despite its name—much to the dismay of organizations such as the American Chemistry Council, a trade group that represents producers of plastic packaging.

“It’s sort of just a big polluting behemoth everywhere it goes,” said state Sen. Pete Harckham, a co-sponsor of the bill, referring to chemical recycling. “That has been one of the major stumbling blocks.” 

In a 2025 memo, the American Chemistry Council, along with business representatives and plastics producers such as ExxonMobil, said that the mandatory packaging reductions are “unreasonable” and that the bill “inappropriately” excludes chemical recycling. The council declined to respond to questions from Inside Climate News.

Chemical recycling, also called advanced recycling, differs from mechanical recycling, which shreds used plastic into small pellets and reuses them in new packaging. Most chemical recycling in the United States breaks down plastic using pyrolysis, an energy-intensive, high-heat process that produces oil and chemical components for new plastics. 

It can also produce tons of what the Environmental Protection Agency terms “hazardous waste,” meaning it can harm human health or the environment. Judith Enck, a former EPA regional administrator and now the president of the nonprofit organization Beyond Plastics, which targets plastics production and pollution, said the process doesn’t produce much new plastic. 

While the bill faces an uphill battle in the final three-and-a-half weeks of this session, lobbyists will keep advocating for chemical recycling in the legislation—even though it’s a “red line” for environmentalists, Harckham said. 

Is It Recycling?

Around 15 percent of municipal solid waste in New York is plastic. In 2022, research showed that less than 10 percent of plastic waste was made from recycled material. Plastic also degrades when it is reused, which means that it can’t be recycled infinitely like glass or metal. 

Recycling plastic is complicated, said Helene Wiesinger, a chemist and science communication officer with the Food Packaging Forum, a nonprofit that researches food packaging. She studies plastic recycling in Switzerland. 

Though the industry touts chemical recycling as a solution because it can break plastics down and reuse the building blocks, Wiesinger said, it’s not always possible. Some of these chemicals in plastic “don’t get broken down,” and much of it ends up burned as fuel.

The few chemical recycling plants in the United States typically use pyrolysis. Veena Singla, a senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council who studies chemical recycling, said pyrolysis is often inefficient. It is energy intensive, requires extreme heat and produces relatively few usable components for new plastics, she said. Pyrolysis also produces an oil from plastic, which can then be used as a fuel—though it must often be diluted with fossil fuels to be used effectively, Singla said.

A still-pending 2024 lawsuit by California’s attorney general against a pyrolysis-based chemical recycling operation alleges that just 8 percent of the plastic waste accepted there gets converted to feedstocks for new plastic.

EPA documents show that the roughly one dozen chemical recycling plants across the country are classified as “large quantity hazardous waste generators.” This hazardous waste often contains benzene, a chemical that can cause certain types of cancer and negatively affect the bone marrow, which produces red blood cells.

Alterra Energy, a chemical recycling facility in Akron, Ohio, released 130 pounds of benzene to the air through piping or smokestacks in 2024, the company reported to the EPA. The prior year, it reported shipping 60 tons of benzene—the cumulative weight of around 27 cars—to be incinerated off site.

Alterra Energy did not respond to requests for comment. 

The facilities, regulated by multiple EPA programs, are classified as incineration facilities under the Clean Air Act. But the Trump administration has proposed a rule to change that. 

In a recent opinion piece in The Hill, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin wrote that the EPA will move to classify pyrolysis as manufacturing, limiting the pollution regulations that facilities would be subject to. 

Enck, the advocate for the New York plastics bill, has said she expects “significant concessions” will be made to pass the bill, but argued that chemical recycling should not be one of them.

Last year the bill passed the state Senate but never made it to the Assembly floor. If it passes both chambers this year, it must clear a final hurdle: Gov. Kathy Hochul could veto it or amend it through an informal agreement with bill sponsors. 

Hochul uses that “chapter amendment” process in one out of every seven bills on average, New York Focus reports. Enck worries that the plastics bill may get diluted that way. 

When asked about this possibility, Harckham said: “You can compromise on details, but you can’t compromise on values.” 

The bill also bans certain toxic chemicals from plastic packaging, like PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals.” Harckham’s staff said that recent legislative amendments to the bill removed some toxic chemicals from the banned list and extended timelines for compliance with the new program and recycling requirements. 

The bill is “central to New York’s waste management strategy and our climate strategy,” Harckham said.