Earlier this year, Eastman Chemical began processing plastic at a new plant in Kingsport, TN, that it calls the largest material-to-material molecular recycling facility in the world. The company uses a chemical procedure called methanolysis to break down hard-to-recycle plastics and turn them into “virgin quality” polyesters. When operating at capacity, the facility will process 110,000 tons of plastic waste a year, the equivalent of 11 billion water bottles a year, said Mark Costa, Eastman’s chief executive.
Australian company Samsara Eco announced a $65 million funding round that attracted investment from Singapore’s state-investment company Temasek and apparel company Lululemon, among others. Using a process it calls enzymatic recycling, it aims to recycle 1.5 million tons of plastic a year by 2030.
Yet earlier in June, during last-minute negotiations on a New York state packaging bill that would have forced companies to meet ambitious recycling standards and reduce their packaging waste by 30%, state legislators agreed that technologies like Eastman’s or Samsara Eco’s would not initially be considered “recycling.”