[House Hearing, 116 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
CLOSING THE LOOP:
EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
IN PLASTICS RECYCLING
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON RESEARCH AND TECHNOLOGY
COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SIXTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
APRIL 30, 2019
__________
Serial No. 116-13
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Printed for the use of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology
[GRAPHIC NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Available via the World Wide Web: http://science.house.gov
__________
U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE
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COMMITTEE ON SCIENCE, SPACE, AND TECHNOLOGY
HON. EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas, Chairwoman
ZOE LOFGREN, California FRANK D. LUCAS, Oklahoma,
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois Ranking Member
SUZANNE BONAMICI, Oregon MO BROOKS, Alabama
AMI BERA, California, BILL POSEY, Florida
Vice Chair RANDY WEBER, Texas
CONOR LAMB, Pennsylvania BRIAN BABIN, Texas
LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas ANDY BIGGS, Arizona
HALEY STEVENS, Michigan ROGER MARSHALL, Kansas
KENDRA HORN, Oklahoma RALPH NORMAN, South Carolina
MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey MICHAEL CLOUD, Texas
BRAD SHERMAN, California TROY BALDERSON, Ohio
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee PETE OLSON, Texas
JERRY McNERNEY, California ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
ED PERLMUTTER, Colorado MICHAEL WALTZ, Florida
PAUL TONKO, New York JIM BAIRD, Indiana
BILL FOSTER, Illinois JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER, Washington
DON BEYER, Virginia JENNIFFER GONZALEZ-COLON, Puerto
CHARLIE CRIST, Florida Rico
SEAN CASTEN, Illinois VACANCY
KATIE HILL, California
BEN McADAMS, Utah
JENNIFER WEXTON, Virginia
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Subcommittee on Research and Technology
HON. HALEY STEVENS, Michigan, Chairwoman
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois JIM BAIRD, Indiana, Ranking Member
MIKIE SHERRILL, New Jersey ROGER MARSHALL, Kansas
BRAD SHERMAN, California TROY BALDERSON, Ohio
PAUL TONKO, New York ANTHONY GONZALEZ, Ohio
BEN McADAMS, Utah JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER, Washington
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee
BILL FOSTER, Illinois
C O N T E N T S
April 30, 2019
Page
Hearing Charter.................................................. 2
Opening Statements
Statement by Representative Haley Stevens, Chairwoman,
Subcommittee on Research and Technology, Committee on Science,
Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives........... 8
Written Statement............................................ 10
Statement by Representative Jim Baird, Ranking Member,
Subcommittee on Research and Technology, Committee on Science,
Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives........... 12
Written Statement............................................ 13
Statement by Representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, Chairwoman,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 15
Written Statement............................................ 16
Written statement by Representative Daniel Lipinski, Committee on
Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.. 19
Written statement by Representative Suzanne Bonamici, Committee
on Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of
Representatives................................................ 26
Witnesses:
Mr. Paul Sincock, City Manager, City of Plymouth, Michigan
Oral Statement............................................... 29
Written Statement............................................ 31
Dr. Govind Menon, Director, School of Science and Technology, and
Chair, Department of Physics and Chemistry, Troy University
Oral Statement............................................... 40
Written Statement............................................ 42
Dr. Gregg Beckham, Senior Research Fellow, National Renewable
Energy Laboratory
Oral Statement............................................... 58
Written Statement............................................ 61
Mr. Tim Boven, Recycling Commercial Director, Packaging and
Specialty Plastics, Dow
Oral Statement............................................... 69
Written Statement............................................ 71
Discussion....................................................... 80
Appendix I: Answers to Post-Hearing Questions
Dr. Govind Menon, Director, School of Science and Technology, and
Chair, Department of Physics and Chemistry, Troy University.... 98
Dr. Gregg Beckham, Senior Research Fellow, National Renewable
Energy Laboratory.............................................. 99
Mr. Tim Boven, Recycling Commercial Director, Packaging and
Specialty Plastics, Dow........................................ 105
Appendix II: Additional Material for the Record
Letter to EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler submitted by
Representative Haley Stevens, Chairwoman, Subcommittee on
Research and Technology, Committee on Science, Space, and
Technology, U.S. House of Representatives...................... 108
Letters of support submitted by Representative Jim Baird, Ranking
Member, Subcommittee on Research and Technology, Committee on
Science, Space, and Technology, U.S. House of Representatives.. 110
CLOSING THE LOOP:
EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
IN PLASTICS RECYCLING
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TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 2019
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Research and Technology,
Committee on Science, Space, and Technology,
Washington, D.C.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:20 p.m., in
room 2318 of the Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Haley
Stevens [Chairwoman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
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Chairwoman Stevens. This hearing will come to order.
Without objection, the Chair is authorized to declare recess at
any time.
Good afternoon, and welcome to this hearing to review the
State of plastics recycling technology in the United States. A
warm welcome as well to our distinguished group of witnesses.
This is going to be an informative and engaging panel, and I am
looking forward to hearing your testimony. I'm also
particularly excited to welcome Mr. Paul Sincock, a local
leader from a city in my district, Michigan's 11th District,
who has worked for the city of Plymouth for over 40 years. How
special to have your leadership from southeastern Michigan here
with us in the United States capital.
It has been a decade since the Science Committee last held
a hearing on recycling, and the challenges have only grown.
During this hearing, we will examine recycling technologies and
the technology gaps that prevent more of our plastics from
being recycled, especially in light of China's new policy to
ban the import of the most postconsumer recycled--recyclable
materials, including plastics, which the U.S. and other
developing countries have been shipping there for the past 25
years. While some businesses were selling China clean and well-
sorted plastics, others were not. This was cited as a main
reason for the ban.
As we'll hear from Mr. Sincock, one of the things I've
heard from local leaders in my district are the challenges they
are facing in maintaining their recycling programs. As waste
management companies are no longer able to sell recyclables to
China, they are driving up their pricing to recoup costs, costs
that fall squarely on our municipalities and our taxpayers.
In many cases, U.S. cities are being forced to cut,
unfortunately, longstanding recycling programs and are instead
incinerating recyclables or leaving them in landfills,
releasing dangerous emissions. Americans who are trying to do
the right thing--our consumers--for our environment, are left
unaware that their efforts are for naught.
Yesterday, I wrote a letter to EPA (Environmental
Protection Agency) Administrator Andrew Wheeler to express my
deep concern that the Federal Government is not doing more to
buildup our own recycling and waste management infrastructure
to help cities and States with this newfound burden. I would
like to at this time submit the letter for the record, without
objection.
Plastic, most of which takes hundreds of years to break
down naturally, has been a particular problem. We're seeing
record amounts of plastic in our water system, including in our
Great Lakes, because we don't have the process to take on the
volumes of waste that we are creating.
Plastic is unquestionably convenient, and global production
of plastic has soared from 2 million tons per year in 1950 to
400 million tons today. Most of our current U.S. recycling
infrastructure is decades old and not built to process the
amounts of plastic we have today.
Likewise, our recycling policies haven't kept pace with
today's plastic use. The last comprehensive Federal law to
improve recycling is the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act
of 1976, before I was born. The most recent publicly available
EPA data on the economic impact of the recycling industry is
from 2007.
The Department of Commerce never acted on a 2007 GAO
(Government Accountability Office) recommendation for the
agency to develop a strategy to stimulate the development of
domestic recycling markets. Instead, Commerce activity--or
actively sought to build international markets. As a result,
the U.S. failed to invest in technology and materials to make
the recycling process more efficient.
This is a familiar story about crumbling infrastructure,
lost industrial capacity, and lack of leadership. However,
China's new policy, while in the short term puts us in crisis
mode, should also be seen as an opportunity for the longer
term, and we need to start now.
Our response should be to reduce and reuse more, but it is
not realistic to think we can give up disposable plastic
altogether. We urgently need a national strategy to build out
our country's recycling infrastructure. It is our opportunity
to seize. At this time, we must invest in research and
development of sustainable materials and processes, as well as
in standards.
A concerted effort will make recycling more cost-effective
for our local governments, while making it easier for the
public to participate. In doing so, we can inspire a
sustainable manufacturing environment, and above all, reduce
emissions to keep our planet healthy.
I greatly look forward to today's testimony and discussion.
I hope it is just the beginning of this Committee's efforts to
contribute to smart solutions in our Nation's recycling
challenges. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Chairwoman Stevens follows:]
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Chairwoman Stevens. And the Chair now recognizes Mr. Baird
for an opening statement.
Mr. Baird. Well, good afternoon, Chairwoman Stevens, and I
appreciate all of you being here with us to testify this
afternoon, and I really appreciate the opportunity to have this
hearing about Emerging Technologies in Plastics Recycling.
In the 20th century, American scientists led the invention
of synthetic plastic materials. These discoveries were
transformative. For the first time human manufacturing was not
constrained by the limits of nature. The creation of plastic
also made material wealth more widespread and obtainable.
Now in the 21st century, we must lead again in the
development of new sustainable materials and recycling
technologies. Investments in these key areas will ensure a
better world for our children and our grandchildren.
The plastics industry is one of the largest manufacturing
sectors in the United States. The industry accounted for more
than $430 billion in shipments and 989,000 jobs in 2017. My
home State of Indiana has the highest concentration of plastics
industry workers in the country, producing nearly $20 billion
in shipments. We have an opportunity to leverage that expertise
to develop a new circular economy for the United States, an
economy that produces, recycles, and reuses materials to reduce
cost and waste.
We have witnesses today from government, academia, and
industry who are working together on those very things to be
able to advance them. I look forward to learning from the
recycling challenges faced by local communities and the new
solutions, including chemical recycling and applying robotics
and artificial intelligence to maintain sorting. Innovation in
these areas will help the environment and the U.S. economy.
We all want clean rivers, lakes, oceans, and healthier
communities. What my constituents don't want are regulations
that will raise the cost of energy, food production,
construction, and technology. Costly regulations, like those
proposed in the Green New Deal, would hurt middle- and working-
class Americans the most.
One of the wonderful things about the Science Committee is
that we are not a regulatory committee. We are the committee of
the future, looking to innovation and to solve problems. I'm
looking forward to hearing from those potential solutions today
for recycling plastic.
Thank you, Madam Chair, I yield back.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Baird follows:]
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Chairwoman Stevens. The Chair now recognizes the Chairwoman
of the Full Committee, Ms. Johnson, for an opening statement.
Chairwoman Johnson. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman,
and good afternoon to all. I want to thank you and the Ranking
Member for putting together this panel to draw attention to the
important issue before us. And welcome to our witnesses.
Plastics have become fundamental to almost every aspect of
our lives, from food storage to 3-D printing technology, and
have enabled us to make great technological advances. With this
progress, however, comes a cost. Some estimates suggest that
all Americans dispose of 22 million tons of products that could
have been recycled every year. We produce far more plastic than
we can properly recycle, domestically and internationally.
The extent of plastics pollution is becoming ever more
apparent and more alarming. Just last week, a study found that
over 90 percent of the river flood plains in Switzerland, a
country with one of the highest recycling rates in the world,
were contaminated with microplastics. It is not just mountains
and the soil which are subject to plastic contamination. We
have all seen pictures of large masses of plastics floating in
the oceans and washing up on the beaches around the world. A
study in 2015 estimated that 8 million metric tons of plastic
end up in the ocean every year. By some estimates, by mid-
century, the oceans will contain more plastic waste than fish,
ton-for-ton. While there is little research to date, we should
be very concerned about the impact on human health from all of
this microplastic in our environment and our food chain.
Complicating the challenge is China's ban on our most
imported recyclables. As a matter of fact, it's put a couple of
businesses in my district out of business. Too many American
communities are facing tough decisions about whether they will
need to cut back on what they recycle or even whether they can
recycle at all.
The news is not all bleak, however. There are a number of
promising new technologies and innovations across all steps of
the recycling pathway from collection to repurposing. These
technologies are being developed through collaborations that
span the lifecycle of the material and include both public and
private partners. The goals of these efforts are to increase
the efficiency and availability of recycling, repurpose more
recycled plastics into high-value products, and ultimately,
reduce the impact on the environment and human health. These
are important efforts with a critical role for many of our
Federal science agencies, as we will hear today.
In conclusion, I want to echo a comment by Chairwoman
Stevens. As we look to improve recycling technologies, we must
step up our efforts to reduce and reuse plastics through better
technology and smarter incentives and policies.
I look forward to today's discussion. I yield back the
balance of my time.
[The prepared statement of Chairwoman Johnson follows:]
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Chairwoman Stevens. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman.
If there are any other Members who wish to submit
additional opening statements, your statements will be added to
the record at this point.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Lipinski follows:]
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[The prepared statement of Ms. Bonamici follows:]
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Chairwoman Stevens. At this time, I would like to introduce
our witnesses. Our first witness is Mr. Paul Sincock. Mr.
Sincock is the City Manager for the city of Plymouth, Michigan,
located in western Wayne County, Michigan. In this role, Mr.
Sincock is the Chief Administrative Officer of the city and is
in charge of the day-to-day operations of the city and directs
the city's efforts on recycling. Mr. Sincock also took the lead
in implementing a pay-as-you-throw trash disposal system in the
city and is a regular speaker on the topic of solid waste and
recycling programs. He is also one of the first people who
brought this problem to my attention.
Our next witness is Dr. Govind Menon. Dr. Menon is the
Founding Director of the School of Science and Technology and
the Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Physics at Troy
University. In 2018, Dr. Menon received a $3.2 million grant
from NIST (National Institutes of Standards and Technology),
one of the agencies that our Subcommittee proudly has oversight
over, to help establish a Center for Materials and
Manufacturing Sciences, which will focus on research into
polymers and polymer recycling. Dr. Menon has a master's degree
and a Ph.D. from Troy University.
After Dr. Menon is Dr. Gregg Beckham. Dr. Beckham is a
Senior Research Fellow at the National Renewable Energy
Laboratory (NREL). He currently leads and works with an
interdisciplinary team of biologists, chemists, and engineers
at NREL on conversions of biomass to chemicals and materials
and in the area of plastics upcycling. He received his Ph.D. in
chemical engineering from MIT.
Our final witness is Mr. Tim Boven. Mr. Boven is currently
the Recycling Commercial Director for the Americas within
Packaging and Specialty Plastics at Dow. He is responsible for
developing new business models and growth strategies that
monetize hard-to-recycle plastic streams in the Americas. Thank
you for your leadership on that. This includes technologies to
enhance mechanical recycling and chemical recycling
technologies. He holds a B.S. in engineering from Western
Michigan University and an MBA from Central Michigan
University.
As our witnesses should know, you will each have 5 minutes
for your spoken testimony. Your written testimony will be
included in the record for the hearing. When you have completed
your spoken testimony, we will begin questions. Each Member
will have 5 minutes to question the panel.
At this time, we will start with the 5-minute testimony
from Mr. Sincock.
TESTIMONY OF PAUL SINCOCK,
CITY MANAGER, CITY OF PLYMOUTH, MICHIGAN
Mr. Sincock. Thank you, Madam Chairperson. I'm pleased to
be here today and honored
[Audio malfunction in hearing room] cycles and to get their
materials in proper and acceptable format to the curb to allow
our vendors to collect and process that material. We have to be
able to do this in a cost-effective manner.
The current market situation does cause us some concern as
we move forward on the viability of recycling because of the
costs that are going up. Without a viable end market for
recyclable goods, the value of recycled goods simply goes down.
The cost of collection, sorting, shipping all must be factored
into the municipal equation. When the value of collective
recyclables goes down, municipal costs go up. When that
happens, the local elected officials have the challenge of
either increasing the cost of recycling programs and
collections or eliminating parts of that program and
potentially landfilling recyclable materials.
In my home State of Michigan, recycling ranges from
programs not offered to a countywide drop-off site to a
regional drop-off site to municipal drop-off sites to curbside
programs with a bucket or a bin to curbside programs, which is
what we use, is commonly called a trash cart you can put your
recyclables in.
If the cost of processing recycling goes up significantly,
there may be a point from the municipal perspective where we
are forced to make a choice on recycling or eliminating
recycling efforts due to cost. Partnerships are key in our
program between government, our vendor, residents, and end-
users. For example, our vendor provides us with educational
materials that we can use and adapt as part of our program to
help educate our residents.
From a technology standpoint, our solid waste and recycling
collection program is pretty basic for our residents. We
provide weekly pickup of solid waste and recyclables. If--they
have a brown cart for trash and they have a big 65-gallon cart
for recycles as well.
Our mission as a municipality is to help make sure that our
residents understand what is acceptable and what is not
acceptable as far as the recyclables go. Our municipality alone
does not generate enough volume of materials needed to provide
the sorting and recycling services at a cost-effective
methodology. Fortunately, we're in a region where there are
large contractors, and there is enough volume to handle that.
While recycling is the right thing to do, it is also a
business, and we must be very aware of the business side of
recycling. Some materials have limited end markets. Some
materials are changing faster than the capital investment cycle
to keep up with the changes, and perhaps future technology will
allow us to expand end markets to keep up with the changes in
materials.
In our small Michigan municipality, it is our job again to
educate our residents on an ongoing basis to ensure that the
quality of our recycled goods is clean and acceptable.
Municipalities across the country must have cost-effective
programs that allow our residents to easily recycle materials
rather than throwing them in a landfill. At a minimum, it must
be just as easy to recycle something as it is to throw
something in the trash. Ideally, it would be easier for the
homeowner or resident to recycle a product rather than throw it
out.
Thank you very much.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Sincock follows:]
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Chairwoman Stevens. And now we will hear from Dr. Menon.
TESTIMONY OF DR. GOVIND MENON,
DIRECTOR, SCHOOL OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY, AND
CHAIR, DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY,
TROY UNIVERSITY
Dr. Menon. Chairwoman Stevens, Ranking Member Baird, and
the distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, thank you for
including me to this discussion.
Chairwoman Stevens. Let's just get your mic on. Hold on. We
want the world to hear you.
Dr. Menon. So do I. Chairwoman Stevens, Ranking Member
Baird, and the distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, thank
you for including me in this discussion concerning the
recycling of plastics.
I've been asked today to talk about the recently
established Center for Materials and Manufacturing Sciences at
Troy University, but before I do so, let me begin with a few
facts that will place a center such as ours in context.
According to the EPA, currently, the plastics recycling
industry is operating below capacity with employment figures
comparable with the U.S. automotive industry. Undoubtedly, an
increase in supply will increase employment and capital
investment.
One of the issues facing the recycling industry is the
practical limitations on the large-scale recyclability of the
existing types of plastics available in the market. Simple
factors like color, odor, strength, and malleability determine
the value of recycled plastics. Additionally, environmental
concerns behind the breaking down of plastic products loom the
industry.
Currently, there is over 200 billion pounds of plastic that
can be shaped, extruded, or otherwise transformed into new
products. However, at present, the recovery rate for all
plastics in the United States is only about 9 percent. Of the
two main plastics, PET (polyethylene terephthalate) and HDPE--
high-density polyethylene--the United States has a recovery
rate of roughly 30 percent. The need for more plastics
recycling is made evident and undeniably provides a case for
our dedicated center of research.
The establishment of the Center for Materials and
Manufacturing Sciences was made possible by a successful $3.2
million grant awarded by NIST. The center will serve as a fully
integrated multidisciplinary research facility that will bridge
various majors and academic ranks. During the initial phase of
establishing the center, one of the primary focuses will be on
developing a state-of-the-art laboratory in polymer recycling.
This major emphasis will aid to advance capabilities and offer
support structure for local and national industries. In the
long-term, the center will help address plastics recycling from
a holistic perspective with complex issues of collecting,
sorting, and cleaning with characterization.
Moreover, the center will assist to engender a well-
equipped next-generation workforce to these industries through
appropriate course and program offerings. Students trained at
the center will participate and be engaged in real-life, real-
time industry projects.
In order to glean the larger issues at stake, at its
inception, the center hosted a road-mapping session at the
recent annual Plastics Recycling Conference held here in
Washington, D.C. I will briefly discuss the three salient
points raised by the nearly 200 attendees of the conference
workshop.
The primary issue facing the recycling industry is the
supply of feedstock. If plastics recycling industry depended on
the various States to supply their plant with recyclable
feedstock, most plants could only run their facilities for a
few days each year.
The second largest issue facing the private sector is
access to current technology. As the demand has continued to
grow, there is an immediate need for resins with letters of
nonobjection from the FDA (Food and Drug Administration).
Collection infrastructure, sorting technology, and resin
chemistry is limited.
The third and final issue that was raised during the
workshop was related to the environmental impact of the
recycling process. The point is here--the point here is that
the technologies developed must be flexible and incorporate
universal utility because the market for material changes
rapidly, and materials available today may not be available the
next week.
Overall, the above questions make visible a significant
lacunae in contemporary research and plastics recycling that
can be effectively translated to sustainable goals in the
industry. The center will focus on short-, medium-, and long-
term issues to be resolved to negate these existing gaps. The
specific projects will be carefully selected, prioritized, and
undertaken in partnership with industry, community, and other
stakeholders.
The nearly zero carbon footprint technology of plastics
recycling must be scaled up to meet the demands of global waste
reduction. Ultimately, the Center for Materials and
Manufacturing Sciences at Troy University will identify,
develop, and implement solutions to the problems in
contemporary plastics recycling by linking academia, industry,
and community. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Menon follows:]
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Chairwoman Stevens. Dr. Beckham.
TESTIMONY OF DR. GREGG BECKHAM,
SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW,
NATIONAL RENEWABLE ENERGY LABORATORY
Dr. Beckham. Chairwoman Stevens, Ranking Member Baird, and
Members of the Subcommittee, I really appreciate the
opportunity to be here with you today to discuss the critical
need for plastics recycling and upcycling and how foundational
science can contribute to this. It has the potential both to
protect our Nation's environment, as well as strengthen the
economy.
So briefly today what I'll address is primarily around two
questions. One is how do we deal with the plastics that we
generate today, and the second is how do we make tomorrow's
plastics recyclable by design?
So plastics, as certainly echoed in the opening remarks,
are essential to modern life. We rely on them, and they made
our lives better. As we all know, though, they're choking our
world's oceans, they're killing aquatic and terrestrial life,
they're in the air we breathe and the food that we eat. And
certainly reducing individual plastic use must be part of the
solution, but plastics should not be demonized.
On top of this, today's recycling industry, from my
perspective, being mostly mechanical in nature, is a
downcycling operation. When you put this PET bottle into the
recycling bin, if it is recycled, it's much lower in value
because its material properties are compromised, and it will
tend to go to things that are lower value like carpet or
clothing, which still ultimately end up in the landfill. And so
there's a very little--in my opinion, very little economic
incentive now to do plastics recycling with the current
paradigms we use. Of course, we all know that China has
recently banned the imports of plastic waste as well, which is
causing massive stress on existing domestic recycling. And so
we need to think beyond today's recycling paradigm.
And our ultimate goal, as, again, was echoed in the opening
statements, is to develop foundational science that can
transition us from a linear flow-through economy where this is
sourced from petroleum and put into the trash or the recycling
bin and likely is still not recycled but downcycled to an
economy that is circular such that this material could stay in
continuous use.
And to this end, chemical recycling or the use of
catalysts, microbes, or enzymes to break down plastics into
building blocks and then build them back up into new, virgin-
like materials offers a more sustainable, innovative, and I
think profitable approach around which we can completely
rebuild and rethink the American recycling industry.
Plastics breakdown is very similar to the breakdown of
waste plant material like agricultural residues that you would
find from corn stover, for example. Plastics are diffusely
distributed just like biomass is. They're costly to recover
just like biomass. They're also incredibly durable and hard to
break down, just like cellulose is. It's the reason why cows
need four stomachs and we don't get any caloric value from
celery, for example.
The advent of a lignocellulose-based economy, as all of you
know, required sustained investment in science and engineering
and technology, and over the last 40 years, there have massive
gains in the viability of biomass conversion such that the
United States and the world I think is on the cusp of utilizing
biomass for renewable fuels, chemicals, and materials. Dealing
with plastics, just like with biomass, will require sustained
commitment to develop these viable processes.
One obvious option in the case of chemical recycling is to
take this PET bottle and convert it back into a PET bottle that
has the same properties. This PET bottle could be broken down
using chemical catalysts or enzymes into its building blocks
and put it back into another bottle like this.
Conversely, and I think more interestingly, there's a
potential for the concept of plastics upcycling, so put this
into the recycle bin, break it down into building blocks, and
then put it into something that has a much longer lifetime and
a much higher value. For example, this PET bottle can be turned
into building blocks that will go into a composite material in
a car. It can go into a wind turbine. It can be made into
Kevlar. It could be made into other things like this.
This idea of upcycling or the creation of more valuable
product from a waste material I think will incentivize the
economics of plastics reclamation, which is really what we
ultimately need. And examples like this need to be developed to
help stem the flow of plastics into the environment and to
landfills.
Second, today, most plastics are made from petroleum-based
building blocks with recycling as an afterthought. This is of
course unsustainable. Foundational science in the last decade
or so, especially funded in the United States has demonstrated
an accessible bio-based building block portfolio around which
we can source new materials to make bio-based plastics.
At the same time that we're building new plastics, we need
to think about how they can be recyclable by design at the end
of their life. And in this redesigning new materials from bio-
based resources, we should inherently design these materials to
be recyclable at the end of their lifetime.
In summary, more research is urgently needed in the concept
of plastics upcycling and enabling recyclable-by-design
plastics. In the last episode of the Blue Planet II, which some
of you may have seen, Sir David Attenborough remarks, quote,
``We are at a unique stage in our history. Never before have we
had such an awareness of what we're doing to the planet and
never before have we had the power to do something about that.
Surely we have a responsibility to care for our blue planet.
The future of humanity and indeed all life on earth now depends
on us.'' He was talking about the plastics problem in this
case.
So in my opinion, dedicated, aggressive, and federally
supported R&D investment that harnesses the innovation of the
U.S. research community must be brought to bear to deal with
today's plastics through the development of chemical recycling
of today's plastics, as well as thinking about how to make
tomorrow's plastics recyclable by design. Developing processes
that can achieve this economic viability should enable the
creation of a completely new industry in the United States and
enable millions of jobs. Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Dr. Beckham follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairwoman Stevens. Mr. Boven.
TESTIMONY OF TIM BOVEN,
RECYCLING COMMERCIAL DIRECTOR,
PACKAGING AND SPECIALTY PLASTICS, DOW
Mr. Boven. Chairwoman Stevens, Ranking Member Baird,
Members of the Subcommittee, it's my privilege to address you
on the topic of ``Closing the Loop: Emerging Technologies in
Plastic Recycling.'' My name is Tim Boven. I am the Recycling
Commercial Director at Dow in our Packaging and Specialty
Plastics business. My organization is responsible for business
solutions that enable a circular economy.
Right now, what's been said, we live in primarily a linear
economy where the goods we use every day are manufactured from
raw materials, sold, used, and then discarded. Applying the
principles of circular economy will allow us to optimize
resources to minimize the extraction of new raw materials and
ultimately reduce the amount of waste going to landfills.
Recycling is foundational for circularity, and it's good
for the economy. Investment in mechanical and chemical
recycling will spur domestic investment supporting business
growth. If widely adopted, advanced recycling processes could
result in growth in new U.S. jobs and economic output. Dow
believes plastics are too valuable to be lost as waste, and as
such, innovation is needed to retain its value.
Plastics provided many benefits to society, including
reducing food waste, improving energy efficiency, reducing
material usage, and improving functionality. What society needs
and where the industry is now focusing is on effective
recycling solutions that retain the value of plastic after its
initial use.
Collection is a key step in the recycling process. If the
material is not collected effectively, it cannot be recycled.
The U.S. recycling system is highly fragmented and variable,
resulting in unequal access and confusion. The challenge
equates to high contamination levels in collected recycling.
Much of the U.S. has a single-stream collection with sorting
left to material recovery facilities, or MRFs. Many MRFs are
privately owned, and their capabilities vary widely. Most were
designed for paper, glass, and metal. Technology and process
improvements are needed in this space to improve the quality
and consistency of the plastic coming from these facilities.
Once we have collected it, we can recycle it. Plastics can
often be much more challenging to recycle than other materials
because of its low density and wide range of plastics
collected, which may be incompatible. Innovation is needed to
improve the ability of equipment to sort and process hard-to-
recycle materials.
Two terms commonly used to describe plastic recycling are
mechanical recycling and chemical or feedstock recycling.
Traditional mechanical recycling is an excellent first step in
getting the value from used plastic and has environmental
benefits. However, mechanical recycling has a significant
limitation in the end-product performance and is only suitable
for a limited number of high-volume applications. It is
extremely difficult to remove all the contaminants such as
dirt, inks, fibers, adhesives, et cetera. All are included in
the recycling stream. All impact performance.
Dow is a supporting innovation in mechanical recycling
through application development, high-performance material
development, allowing for the incorporation of PCR (post-
consumer recycled plastic), compatibilization technology to
minimize contamination. Even with these advances, mechanical
recycling of all plastics is a significant challenge,
particularly in high-end applications like those that require
FDA approval.
These challenges require innovation that cannot be
addressed with processes like feedstock recycling. Feedstock
recycling is an advanced recycling process of depolymerizing a
plastic back to its original building blocks where it can be
then introduced into the front end of the polymer manufacturing
process. This process is very similar to paper recycling where
it's taken back to fiber. Feedstock recycling has the potential
to produce recycled plastic with virgin-like performance
capable of being used in the most stringent applications. Dow
is actively researching plastic conversion processes of
pyrolysis and gasification. We have projects ranging from
process technology through the effective conversion to plastic.
Increasing recycling rates and expanding the materials
collected will not happen on its own, and there are important
steps Congress can take to enable growth in this sector. This
includes support on uniform definitions on recycling so that
new technology is not precluded, standards for mass-balance
accounting to certify recycled plastic content, recycling
infrastructure funding, and to support in the development of
new end markets for recycled plastic. I've expanded on these
topics in my written statement.
In conclusion, thank you for your time and the opportunity
to testify on this important topic. We believe the public and
private sectors can partner together to advance innovation and
accelerate recycling. Dow looks forward to working with
Congress on these issues and answering any questions the
Committee may have.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Boven follows:]
[GRAPHICS NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Chairwoman Stevens. Thank you so much.
At this point we are going to begin our first round of
questions, and the Chair is going to recognize herself for 5
minutes.
Undoubtedly, where we see challenge and identify challenge
as a Nation, we readily want to turn that challenge into
opportunity, and that is something that I heard from all of you
in your scope of work and in your testimony.
Mr. Sincock, I'd like to just drill down for a minute with
you. Since these new changes from China have been implemented,
could you just explain a little bit about what our small town
of Plymouth, the city of Plymouth, has been experiencing with
its recycling?
Mr. Sincock. Certainly, the city of Plymouth, we have
been--we're right toward the end of our contract with our solid
waste and recycling hauler, so we've been OK at this point, but
several of our neighboring communities, you know, we all talk,
and are feeling the pinch and, you know, we have also had our
contractor come to us and say, look, recycling costs are going
up. We need more help. We need you to take a look at, you know,
perhaps amending our contract, those kinds of issues.
So we're seeing that there's more issues with the
recycling, especially plastics, in trying to make sure that our
residents are able to still have a program that is viable from
a--you know, an operational standpoint, you know, that's not
cost-prohibitive. And that's really where the--tends to be the
trend is going at this point, is significant cost increases
from our haulers and recyclers related to the product, and that
obviously passes down to our residents.
Chairwoman Stevens. And as you have spent time educating
the public on the benefits of recycling or encouraging them to
recycle, what challenges have you run into? What things have
you seen that worked best in terms of recycling campaigns? And
have you started to hear about this fear of cost?
Mr. Sincock. Well, certainly one of the things--the big
challenges that we have is do we back our recycling programs
down? You know, we've spent so much time and effort building up
the recycling programs, you know, our community has very high
and impressive rates of recycling in Wayne County, but it also
becomes an issue for our residents if we are going to back down
from the really good programs that we currently have and the
amount of education that we put into it. And it's a hard sell
at the municipal level that--I call it the reach-out-and-touch-
me level of government where, what do you mean, we're not
recycling whatever the product may be? That's a hard, difficult
conversation to have with our residents.
Chairwoman Stevens. Do you see a revenue opportunity for
the city in recycling or, you know, continuing to build out
your programs? And are there ways that the Federal Government
can help you to meet those goals?
Mr. Sincock. Well, I think what the issue is on the revenue
side is--and it depends on the municipality. Our particular
contract, we wanted to stay out of the swings in the market, so
in our particular case the vendor takes all of the risk as to
market upside and market downside, so we're not affected. Our
price stays constant. Now, we don't get the benefit of, you
know, when recycling, you know, markets go up and the
contractor gets to receive some benefits there, but on the
flipside of that, we don't have to deal with the downside.
And so that's--you know, other municipalities get--they
split the value of the recycles between the vendor and the
community. The community will get a small percentage of the
recyclables. But as the market goes down, that percentage goes
down to near zero or less than zero.
Chairwoman Stevens. We have our storied traditions and best
practices in Michigan with our recycling programs and our
buyback programs. I think it's evident that there are certainly
opportunities and revenue opportunities, as well as sincere
environmental considerations for us to meet, and yet the onus
is on our consumers and it's on our taxpayers, and it's sort of
reliant on the altruism of our residents to recycle and to not
throw--I commend all of you who talked about the greasy pizza
box in your testimony because--at least two of you did. But in
terms of how we're stymied or how we can meet some of our
bigger goals and some economic opportunities. You know, I
commend our last two witnesses for mentioning the circular
economy and what that means for us and how in sync we really
are.
I'm out of time, so I'm just going to conclude with one of
the results that we want to take from this hearing is
identifying Federal opportunity to partner with you in your
respective fields and portfolios of work to lead to increased
recycling, meeting environmental goals, as well as economic
opportunity based on technological advancement.
And, with that, I'm going to recognize my colleague, Mr.
Baird, for 5 minutes.
Mr. Baird. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. Boven, the Subaru plant in Lafayette, Indiana, which is
in my district, has been a zero-landfill facility since 2004,
and that reflects a commitment by the company to have as little
environmental impact as possible. Can you elaborate for me what
Dow and the plastics industry in general has been doing to work
with the front-end sustainability idea and not just the back-
end sustainability in producing products?
Mr. Boven. Yes, sure, thank you, Congressman. So at Dow I
can speak specifically. We've had a series of 10-year
sustainability goals. Now, we're in our third generation of
those. They go out through 2025. And the sustainability goals
that we have at our company are really around defining
blueprints for designing sustainability into the future. So
when you talk about plastic circularity in particular, the big
initiative that we're very involved with is designed for
recyclability. How do we help our customers, how do we help the
marketplace design products that can be recycled in the end?
Today, a lot of packaging, as an example, has gone to very
complex structures, which create problems for the recycling
industry. And so what we're working with them on is all
polyethylene-type structures, as an example. And the reason
we're doing that is because polyethylene is one of the largest-
collected plastics today, so if we can get more materials into
common materials that can be collected, that can help with
increasing plastic recovery and plastic recycling.
This is one example. We have a lot of initiatives of
materials science in terms of increasing resins that can
incorporate recycled content, as well as end market. We're
working on new market applications so we can create new large-
volume applications to create these markets that people say
don't exist. This is where we're spending a lot of our time.
Mr. Baird. Thank you. And continuing on in that same vein,
in your testimony you discussed the benefits of chemical
recycling. What's needed to scale up and bring down the cost of
chemical recycling and make it more viable in the United
States? Anything?
Mr. Boven. That's a very good question. One of the things
that we're looking at aggressively is, how do we address that
very topic of scale? When you look at the petrochemical
industry today, it's been capitalized around very large fossil
fuel deposits. When you talk about using plastic as a
feedstock, plastic is everywhere. So a significant challenge
that we are working through and trying to address with value
chain partners is how do we aggregate plastic and bring it to a
central location so we can get the appropriate amount of
feedstock to build the appropriate scale we need to be
meaningfully effective?
At the same time, we're working on the capital intensity
equation to try to bring down the capital intensity per metric
ton of product produced so we can put feedstock recycling
located where the feedstock is, in this case, waste plastic.
Mr. Baird. Thank you. Another question--have I got time I
think? Dow and the other companies are investing heavily in new
sustainable material and in recycling technologies. What's the
market incentive for industry to invest in research in that
area?
Mr. Boven. Well, quite frankly, society is demanding it.
The plastic waste issue, you can't turn on the television, you
can't go to the internet without seeing it. And society wants
solutions to this. So we look at this as, yes, it's a big
challenge, but it can be an opportunity for those who want to
make those investments today and work toward addressing the
problem of the future. So this is how we see it. It's going to
be absolute, and it's where we're putting a lot of time and
effort.
Mr. Baird. Thank you. And one last question if you will.
Mr. Boven. Sure.
Mr. Baird. How would developing standards for plastic
materials and recycling help advance the industry in the United
States and maintain America's leadership in that field?
Mr. Boven. Standards in what regard?
Mr. Baird. I was thinking about any of the things that
relate to regulation of plastics or the quality of the
plastics.
Mr. Boven. Thank you. So one thing that will help certainly
is to create definitions around what recycling is. Today, when
we look at what people want and require, it's high-end recycled
material. That's not going to be possible without advanced
recycling technologies. Today, there is no universal definition
of recycling. And as we look to bring forward new technologies,
we want to make sure that technologies like pyrolysis,
gasification, solvolysis, those types of processes are included
in the definition of recycling. And this would be increasingly
important as people look to put policy around. We know there
are States that are having these discussions, and if they start
putting policy around recycling targets, definitions will
follow. And we want to ensure that there's broad definitions
that don't preclude technology.
Mr. Baird. Thank you very much. And I yield back my time.
Chairwoman Stevens. The Chair now recognizes Mr. McAdams
for 5 minutes.
Mr. McAdams. Thank you, Madam Chair, for convening this
timely and important hearing.
And thank you, Mr. Sincock, Dr. Menon, Dr. Beckham, and Mr.
Boven, for your testimony here today.
In my previous role, I was the Mayor of Salt Lake County,
and I worked to enhance our waste management practices to
achieve our environmental goals, and it often aligned with our
fiscal objectives. We found that they were oftentimes the same
thing. Whether collecting green waste to break down and resell
or capturing methane leakage for energy generation or landfill,
technologies made our waste management greener, smarter, and
less costly to taxpayers.
So I'm excited today to have the opportunity to discuss how
we can make use of new and forthcoming technologies to make our
plastics sorting, management, and recycling more effective and
profitable in recycle and upcycle applications. We've also seen
some of the challenges as global interests in some--in some of
our recycling has waned, and so--my first question is for you,
Mr. Sincock.
As boots on the ground in your town, what's been the most
effective tool that you've used to help residents to improve
their recycling practices, the individual practices?
Mr. Sincock. Education, and it's ongoing and multifaceted.
So it's mailers to the home, it's stickers on the trash carts,
it's social media. All of those things are a critical element
to ensuring that the plastics industry has a quality product to
deal with.
Mr. McAdams. And what's the most common request or
complaint that your community voices about your recycling
program or what have you done to remedy any concerns that were
raised?
Mr. Sincock. The most common complaint is that we don't
recycle enough----
Mr. McAdams. Yes.
Mr. Sincock [continuing]. And that--you know, it becomes a
challenge as to how do we have a product that somebody else is
going to use.
Mr. McAdams. So, Dr. Beckham, in your testimony you said
that recycling alone can save 40 to 90 percent of the inherent
energy in plastics relative to the production of new plastics.
Does this apply to both chemical and mechanical recycling?
Dr. Beckham. Most of those statistics were currently
obtained in the context of standard today's mechanical
recycling.
Mr. McAdams. Do we have good estimates for potential energy
savings using chemical recycling?
Dr. Beckham. Right. I think judicious lifecycle
assessments, techno-economic analysis, as well as, just
generally supply chain energy analyses are forthcoming, but we
have looked at PET upcycling, for example, using chemistry to
produce two composite materials, and they have shown over
standard composites manufacturing can save up to 60 percent of
the supply chain energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions
quite considerably as well.
Mr. McAdams. It's promising. Dr. Menon, what technologies
could help us--could help simply--to simple--simplify
decisionmaking for Americans as they sort their waste into
trash or bin recycling every day? And maybe that's generally as
a question, but I've also--there have been some experimental
technologies that I've heard about or haven't had the
opportunity to actually witness them but--about single
streaming both waste and recycling, and your thoughts on that.
Dr. Menon. In terms of technology, the real issue is access
to technology. It's one thing for academia to have
instrumentation. It's another thing entirely for recycling
facilities to have instrumentation. So perhaps one of the
things that we should look into particularly from the point of
view of academia is to make technology affordable. Can we
reinvent instrumentation that is more affordable and more
accessible? Recycling companies make pennies to a pound, so
every dollar, every pound of recycling material matters. So
they're not able to invest necessarily into technology, so
maybe a new generation of affordable technologies is what we're
thinking of at this point rather than reinventing technology as
well. But, as was mentioned by Dr. Beckham, of course chemical
recycling is--it's virgin territory in terms of large-scale
recycling, so that is something we would be considering as
well.
Mr. McAdams. So I guess my question to all of you, and I'm
about out of time, but what infrastructure are we lacking as a
country? What--and what can we do to--as a Congress to further
incentivize these investments in R&D and then deployment of
technology?
Mr. Sincock. Well, I think the issue for us at the local
municipal level is where's the end product, and is there a use,
and then how do we cost-effectively collect that material? And,
you know, mixing it into a single stream is interesting.
Mr. McAdams. I've seen the technology. As a Mayor, it was
troubling to me because I was--the technology is there. My
concern was is it viable and in experimenting with that, do we
lose all the ground we've gained with educating our consumers
on sorting going single stream, then have it fail and we just
lost.
Mr. Sincock. Exactly.
Mr. McAdams. Yes. Thank you. I yield back.
Chairwoman Stevens. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Balderson
for 5 minutes.
Mr. Balderson. Thank you, Chairwoman.
Thank you all for being here this afternoon.
This question goes to Dr. Menon and Mr. Boven. I had a
question for all of you, but the gentlemen down there took my
question, so, currently, municipalities set their own recycling
standards depending upon what the facility in the area is
capable of processing. They can vary widely from city to city
depending upon the local infrastructure.
Dr. Menon, you've touched on NIST's efforts to create
processing standards in this space. Recently, the university,
as you stated, received a grant to work on expanding this.
While I understand the draw toward this, I remain concerned
that the Federal Government is not best suited to achieve this
goal. Ensuring that recycling plants across the country have
the same processing abilities, however, would lessen the amount
of plastic that needs to be exported for processing. Could you
speak about what you have found in your research on this
subject?
Dr. Menon. Thank you very much for the question. I do
believe NIST is the right agency. In particular, we don't have
a universal standard when it comes to recycling plastics. If
you look at the resin identification code, the numbers 1
through 7, it tells you the polymer content in a bottle. It
doesn't tell you anything about the contaminants, nor does it
tell you how to recycle the product. So setting these standards
is a gamechanger when it comes to recycling, and setting
standards is what NIST does. Thank you.
Mr. Balderson. Thank you. Mr. Boven, are the suggestions
that Dr. Menon offered something that Dow could see working in
the marketplace?
Mr. Boven. Yes, thank you for the question. Yes, the answer
is yes. In fact, there's--this is--the Sustainable Packaging
Coalition where that group has already developed and working
toward developing recycling standards for packagers to put on
their labels, both paper and plastic, the how-to recycle label.
And it gives implicit instructions to consumers on the packages
they buy on how to recycle it, whether it be not recyclable or
store drop-off. Those types of instructions are put on it.
That's a first step, and that is working at cleaning up the
recycling streams today because one of the issues is you have
wish cyclers who put everything in their single-bin collection
system, which actually creates a lot of problems for the MRFs
and you have a lot of rejected material because of that, so it
starts with cleaning up what goes into the recycling bins
first.
Mr. Balderson. OK. Thank you very much. I yield back my
remaining time, Madam Chair.
Chairwoman Stevens. Yes. The Chair would now like to
recognize Mr. Foster for 5 minutes.
Mr. Foster. Well, thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to
our witnesses.
Let's see. Most of the talk so far has been on
thermoplastics, PET and polyethylene. Are thermosets and cross-
linked plastics pretty much a lost cause for recycling or are
there enzymatic systems that may depolymerize them and allow
them to be recycled?
Dr. Beckham. So I'll take that. So thermosets today are
indeed very challenging to recycle because it's hard to get
them to flow in the context of the mechanical and thermal
recycling paradigms we have now. Thinking forward to
recyclability by design, there is an emerging field in polymer
science around this concept of vitrimers where you have cross-
links that are able to be chemically broken down, so you would
imagine taking a thermoset, a composite material, dumping it
in, for example, to acid, and breaking that down into flowable
polymers again. There's an enormous opportunity here for
recycling.
A wind turbine blade, which is a cross-linked thermoset,
which we can't do right now, we grind it up and put most of it
into the landfill or burn it. But I think emerging chemistries
for recyclability by design for composite materials that would
go into a wind turbine or car or snowboard or whatever have
enormous potential, so----
Mr. Foster. And do structural fibers that are, you know,
carbon fibers or other fibers put in, do those make life really
rough for recycling as well?
Dr. Beckham. Certainly, traditional polyacrylonitrile
carbon fiber today is very challenging from a recyclability
perspective. Again mostly, it's thermal energy recovery is sort
of the place that's routed to. There are emerging chemistries
from the academic community and generally the U.S. research
community on ways to break down polyacrylonitrile-based carbon
fiber, but that's incredibly challenging. So, again, I think we
need to rethink how we're putting those carbon fibers together
and think about recyclability by design, as well as lifetime
performance----
Mr. Foster. And so by the thermal--you mean that is
pyrolysis and gasification, what you're saying----
Dr. Beckham. As well as just simply burning it for energy
recovery in some cases.
Mr. Foster. OK. And actually, Mr. Boven, you mentioned in
addition to pyrolysis and gasification something that sounded
like solvolysis or something. What was--that's not something
I'm familiar with.
Mr. Boven. Yes, solvolysis. So solvolysis is a solvent-
based process. It's commonly used for PET and nylon. Those
polymer architectures are well-suited for that where you can
use a solvent to break it down into monomer and then you can
build it back up.
Mr. Foster. OK. All right. So it's a solvent. Got it. I
understand. I think I used to do that with Styrofoam and model
airplane glue as a child. Now, see, look at that, there's a lot
of common experience in that, the first time you tried to do
that and it didn't end well.
So what fraction then of the current plastic production
stream are easy targets like PET and high-density polyethylene?
Is that 80 percent of the plastics production that are things
we ought to be able to recycle or are there just a million
small streams that will all each have to be dealt with?
Mr. Boven. Well, polyolefins are--polyolefins being
generically polypropylene, polyethylene, are the largest
polymer family used in packaging-type applications, non-durable
applications, applications that have a life that's less than,
say, a year. And those are the targeted--where we should put a
lot of effort in recycling and recovery, and they have large
end markets as well. So if you can recover those materials, you
have the opportunity to recycle those and find homes for them.
Mr. Foster. But is that 50 percent of plastic production or
just another 20-percent hunk?
Mr. Boven. No, it--I'd have to get back with you, sir, on
that exact question, but those two polymer families are the
largest. It's directionally just south of 50 percent are
polyethylene-type materials.
Mr. Foster. OK. And, now, according to Wikipedia, if you
look at polyethylene terephthalate, a majority goes into
fibers. And so is it--how do recycle fibers if someone makes,
you know, a Dacron shirt or something like this? Are you really
going to recycle that? The number in Wikipedia was about 50
percent going into fibers, and is that a whole separate
struggle to even collect it in a pure stream?
Mr. Boven. The challenge there is collection of textiles,
yes. You have to collect it, and then you would have to put it
in some sort of chemical recycling process to effectively
recycle it.
Mr. Foster. Right. And these are often mixed with cotton
and so on, and so it's a difficult--are there any plausible
ways to make that happen, to recycle clothes that are made with
multiple fibers?
Mr. Boven. So chemical recycling, feedstock recycling has
the opportunity, depending on the technology route that you
take. Gasification, as an example, is a technology route that
can take any organic material, so it can be biomass, it can be
fiber, it can be plastic. You can put it in there. That will
break it down to fundamental syngas, and from syngas, we can do
lots of different things with it.
Dr. Beckham. If I can just add one thing in terms of PET
mixed with cotton, which is a lot of polyester clothing,
enzymatic processes are exquisitely selective to go in and
break both the Ester bonds in PET, as well as the ether bonds
in cellulose or cotton to make sugars and mixtures of these
building blocks of PET. So I think there's a lot of potential
there as well.
Mr. Foster. OK. Thank you, and I yield back.
Chairwoman Stevens. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Gonzalez
for 5 minutes.
Mr. Gonzalez. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, witnesses,
for being here today.
I first want to use this time to recognize the University
of Akron's College of Polymer Science and Polymer Engineering,
which is recognized as being one of the world's best in the
polymer sciences. The University also does great work getting
young students excited about the polymer sciences through their
Akron Global Polymer Academy, which provides opportunities for
teachers and students of all ages to experience the world of
polymers by organizing in-school visits and field trips to the
university's research facilities. They're doing a fantastic
job. Polymer research and development has been huge in
northeast Ohio, where I'm from, for my entire life and before
it, so we're proud of that.
I want to take my time to really just understand this a
little bit better frankly. And my first question will be to Mr.
Boven. I'll probably stay with you if that's OK. I first want
to understand the interplay between mechanical and chemical in
the context of the circular economy. It strikes me, as I read
your testimony, that chemical is probably how we get there
ultimately. I'm sure there's obviously a role for mechanical,
but can you just kind of walk me through that for a second?
Mr. Boven. Yes, sure, thank you for the question. So when
you look at the--there is a relationship between mechanical and
chemical recycling in the sense that we would suggest that, if
it can be mechanically recycled, it should be. It should be
because there's a lower carbon footprint. It's not as energy-
intensive, and it can be deployed locally, right? You can do
mechanical recycling at a very local level very effectively.
The challenge with mechanical recycling has always been finding
end markets----
Mr. Gonzalez. Right.
Mr. Boven [continuing]. Because you'll have some polymer
degradation. Products that cannot be introduced into mechanical
recycling system effectively are the products that should go
into chemical recycling because at that route you can address
the contamination issues that come. And in fact, when you talk
about MRFs today, on average, about 25 to 30 percent of the
material going into a MRF is actually rejected because it's
too----
Mr. Gonzalez. OK.
Mr. Boven [continuing]. Highly contaminated to be
processed. You can feed that into a chemical recycling process
to then recycle the product.
Mr. Gonzalez. Thank you. And then my second question, when
it comes to chemical recycling, and I'll score these 1, 5, and
10, so if 1 is sort of we understand what needs to happen but
we haven't really started developing, 5 is our tech is viable
but we need to find business models to get it deployed more in
the market, and then 10 is we understand the tech, we
understand the business model, we just need to deploy and
scale, where are we on chemical manufacturing?
Mr. Boven. I would put us at a 5----
Mr. Gonzalez. OK.
Mr. Boven [continuing]. Quite frankly.
Mr. Gonzalez. OK.
Mr. Boven. When we're talking about chemical manufacturing,
we're talking about mature technologies like gasification,
pyrolysis. They've been around for a long time. They have not
been used widely for the purpose of recycling plastic, and so
we're talking about putting a value chain together and
different partners together to aggregate the plastic to get it
to a chemical recycling facility. From there, you turn it into
an intermediate, and then you have to integrate it into the
current petrochemical industry.
Mr. Gonzalez. OK.
Mr. Boven. So we have to work on the business model side.
Mr. Gonzalez. OK. So it's a combination of business model.
Once we get there, then we can scale it.
My last one--and I kind of hate to go here, but these paper
straws, they are my pet peeve. I took my son the other day to
get a milkshake. He's 1-year-old. We do this on Saturdays,
paper straw shows up, the thing disintegrates before we're a
third of the way through. He's also throwing whipped cream at
my face, so, you know, all kinds of things going on there.
I personally despise them. On top of that, only .025
percent of plastic that's flowing into the ocean is straws,
plastic straws. They also require more energy to manufacture
than plastics. So I kind of want to just have you give me some
hope that maybe Dow is working on either new technologies, new
bioplastics that are more efficient and better for the
environment or that we're making progress on the sort-ability
because my understanding is the reason why it's hard to recycle
plastic straws is because it's hard to sort them. So give me
some hope, please.
Mr. Boven. Yes, we should take hope. There is hope, and I
say that because plastic pollution is now widely accepted
across the world. And you see collaboration happening across
the value chain that hasn't happened at least in my 22 years in
the plastic industry. You see industry partners coming together
making investments like the Alliance to End Plastic Waste,
where over $1 billion has been committed to fund solutions to
drive the ending of plastic waste. Now, is $1 billion enough? I
know $1 billion is a great start, and we expect it to continue
to grow.
When you talk about biodegradability or bio-based plastics,
those are two very different things. We think the focus needs
to be on investing in infrastructure to recover the plastic and
retain its value. That's where we're spending a majority of our
time, and we don't want to get distracted with other things
that aren't going to have a meaningful impact.
Mr. Gonzalez. OK. Thank you. And I yield back.
Chairwoman Stevens. It looks like we'll be calling the T&I
Committee after this hearing based on those repeated claims.
The Chair is now going to recognize Mr. Cohen for 5
minutes.
Mr. Cohen. Thank you. Good news for your son, a gift you
can get him and I would get him if--and should get him and
present to you, you can buy steel straws, and he'll have his
own straw to get his milkshake out of, and it'll be real cold
when it comes up, which is a nice feeling. Plastic does not
give you that nice feeling, but a cold steel straw is a very
attractive thing. On the internet you can get them--a set of 20
for $9.99, wholesale, Amazon.com.
Mr. Gonzalez. Mr. Cohen, his birthday was 2 weeks ago.
Mr. Cohen. Oh, wow.
Mr. Gonzalez. We accept. We accept.
Mr. Cohen. Would he still accept gifts?
Mr. Gonzalez. Oh, absolutely.
Mr. Cohen. Good. Well, I will get him one.
Mr. Gonzalez. Thank you.
Mr. Cohen. A set. I've got a friend in Los Angeles who's
big in the Anti-Plastics Coalition, Dianna Cohen, no relation,
and she's given me steel straws. And I don't use straws that
much, but when I do, I find a great sense of tactile, you know,
pleasure out of using that steel straw, which I never got out
of a plastic straw or certainly not a paper straw. So this is a
whole new day for everybody really.
Now, I would like to ask Mr.--is it Boven? Last year, I had
a bill which passed the House that said we would not use
plastic straws in the cafeterias, and it passed, but it passed
over the objections of Dow Chemical I think. There was a
Congressman from--that worked for Dow, represented Dow, et
cetera, got a lot of money from Dow, and he worked against it
and got--wanted to get--water it down. Why can't Dow come up
with something that is good for the environment rather than
things that are bad for the environment and work against us
making the environment better?
Mr. Boven. Congressman, thank you for your question.
Mr. Cohen. I'm sure thank you is not what you really meant,
but thank you for saying that.
Mr. Boven. I'm not an expert in the policy side or familiar
with the discussion that you're talking about, but we can have
our D.C. office get back to and address that question.
Mr. Cohen. Well, that'd be all right I guess, but, you
know, we--I think we're changing our policies, and we ought to
be--like right now, there's a whole bunch of plastic bottles
with water out there. We really shouldn't be using plastic
bottles with water, and I brought it in and all of a sudden I
thought, what are we doing? I mean, we've got these cups here,
this is great, but we ought to be carrying around our own and
pouring water into them from the sink. Potomac water is fine.
Mr. Sherman. I second that motion.
Mr. Cohen. And--exactly. Good work, Brad. And not using
plastic as much as we can. It's reduce, recycle, and reuse.
Well, reduce, and that's what you--we've got to do because it
is getting in the water and animals are dying. The--you know,
they found whales with tons of plastic in their gut, and they
think it related to their deaths. And there's all kind of sea
life that is being killed because of plastic pollutions in the
oceans. So we need to stop using plastic as much as we can.
Dr. Menon, do you have any ideas on how we can maybe create
or use paper, something else, anything other than plastic? And
I know this is made of plastic, but this is reused.
Dr. Menon. Mr. Cohen, thank you very much for the question.
I do not often know of a material that would replace plastic so
easily. It exists because of the availability, the ease, and
the versatility. So it is not easily replaced. But maybe there
are plant fiber solutions that we could think of that would be
easier to at least degrade easily.
But I would like to make a comment regarding one of the
statements you made. So in the Mariana Trench, which is deeper
than Everest is tall, every animal species found had plastic in
their guts, so this is where we are when it comes to plastics
recycling. And plastics recycling in the ocean, that's an
entirely--I mean, so that's an impossible task. It shouldn't
get there in the first place.
Mr. Cohen. Yes, well, we need to find a way to reuse or
reduce our use of plastics and then reuse whatever possible.
And recycling is great and I recycle everything I can, and I
hope Memphis does a good job on it, but, you know, it's just a
different--today, I went--and I'm very proud of what I did
today because I've been obsessing on it. These glasses,
eyeglasses, I like them a lot, and I've had them for long time.
And I got them to replace a pair of sunglasses I had that I
really loved. They were American Optical Saratogas, which were
the same glasses that John Kennedy wore, sunglasses. And so
John Kennedy wore them, I wore them. You know, he was in the
House, I'm in the House. That's as far as it goes.
And my sunglasses--I broke them about 15 years ago I think,
and then I broke these about 3 weeks or a month ago. Everybody
in the world tells you, you can't repair plastic, it's
impossible, it's done. Well, I'd saved those glasses from 15
years ago, and these, and I took them to a guy up here at 750
17th, and he fixed both pair of glasses. You can't see the--
that they were broken, and these were broken in two different
places, $70, they're back together. Reuse your plastic frames.
Don't buy new ones. Get them redone, 750 17th Avenue, right
opposite the Executive Office Building, great deal.
And with that, I want to say I love The Graduate, but
plastics, no.
Chairwoman Stevens. All right. The Chair is now going to
recognize Mr. Sherman for 5 minutes.
Mr. Sherman. Thank you, and thank you for holding these
hearings and bringing them to my particular attention.
The gentleman from Tennessee focuses us not only on reduce,
reuse, and recycle, but also repair, so the fourth R, but once
you get through all four R's, there's a reason why we prefer,
from an environmental standpoint, paper straws to plastic
straws, and that is that paper is biodegradable. How close are
we to developing plastic products that have the advantages of
plastic, pretty much the cost of plastic, but are in fact
biodegradable? Mr. Boven? You guys anywhere close to that?
Mr. Boven. Biodegradable--biodegradable plastics do exist
today. PLAs (polylactic acid or polylactides) are an example.
Biodegradable plastics present serious challenges to today's
recycling infrastructure. They are not accepted into the
infrastructure----
Mr. Sherman. But they will--you know, a paper straw can't
be recycled or I guess is often not recycled, but at least it
biodegrades. How biodegradable? How long do you put it in the
ground before it disappears?
Mr. Boven. Well, Dow isn't producing those resins, but
there are biodegradable plastics available. Again, from our
perspective, when you look at biodegradability,
biodegradability is not going to solve the plastic pollution
issue that we have. We want to focus--we don't want to distract
from----
Mr. Sherman. Well, why is that? Right now, we're recycling
9 percent, so it's 91 percent irrelevant whether it's a
recyclable or nonrecyclable plastic; it's not going to be
recycled. What is--what tax incentives or whatever could we
give for biodegradable plastics? Does anybody have any
proposal? Let me move on. We've got these islands of plastic in
the--floating in the ocean, mostly plastic. There--is there any
commercial value to that which you've subsidized could be used
to be chemically recycled? Does anybody have an answer? None of
our--yes?
Dr. Menon. So harvesting the plastic from the ocean would
be the problem.
Mr. Sherman. Right, that's what I'm----
Dr. Menon. So----
Mr. Sherman. I mean, it's floating there----
Dr. Menon. Right. So these plastics are----
Mr. Sherman. But someone picking it up wouldn't be that--if
we picked it up, what would--would we do anything useful with
it?
Dr. Menon. Yes, I think most of them are PET in there.
Dr. Beckham. Yes, I mean, certainly, if you are able--if
you are able to harvest it in an economically viable manner, it
would probably be like the same plastics we get at materials
recovery facilities already.
Mr. Sherman. OK. So these pose a major threat to the
environment and the oceans, with the proper incentives,
somebody would pick them up, get some subsidy, and use those
chemicals for something useful?
Dr. Beckham. Potentially, but I think that the engineering
challenges of going and harvesting plastics from the ocean are
incredible and would certainly need a lot of investment to be
able to do that at a scale that would actually make a
difference.
Mr. Sherman. OK. We have 8.3 billion metric tons of
plastics produced globally, 6.3 billion becomes plastic waste,
9 percent is being recycled. The U.S. only recycles 9 percent,
China does 25, Europe does 30, so our 9 looks pretty weak. And
then you realize some of our 9 is really in Chinese landfills.
What can the U.S. do to promote recycling internationally? Does
anybody have an answer? Do you want to comment? I'm looking at
four witnesses, all of whom are extremely shy.
Dr. Beckham. I mean, I would say that----
Mr. Sherman. Yes.
Dr. Beckham [continuing]. Again, I think the United States
has the opportunity to lead the way from a technology
development perspective to create chemical recycling
technologies that will incentivize the reclamation of waste
plastics. If we can do that in the United States, likely those
technologies would be deployable outside the United States as
well if they--if the economic incentive is there.
Mr. Sherman. Is there any particular technology that you
think the U.S. Government should be--you know, it's just on the
cusp of doing something important but needs some research
dollars or incentives. Is there any one area of research any of
you would recommend? Yes, Mr. Boven?
Mr. Boven. Yes, so research in creating new end
applications would be very valuable. One of the problems that's
been articulated is that there's not enough end markets for
recycling, and so accelerating end market generation would
create a home for recycled plastic.
Mr. Sherman. My time is expired. Thank you.
Chairwoman Stevens. The Chair would like to reclaim 5
additional minutes for questions. This is what all of the
Committee looks like, by the way, on the Subcommittee for
Research and Technology.
I wanted to kind of glom onto something, Dr. Beckham, that
you had included in your written testimony where you wrote,
``Given the amount of plastics in the food chain, plastics are
commonly now found in the human body with potential
toxicological effects that are not yet fully understood.'' And
that sentence jumped out at me in a very stark way in part
because I view all of you as the solution delivery vehicles of
what we want to do on plastic recycling. You're on the solution
end, you're on the problem-solving end.
You know, we've heard a few comments. It's been couched
within your testimony about some of the illegal dumping that's
going on, some of the mismanagement, the missed opportunities
to reuse, reduce, and recycle. But I was just wondering if you
could kind of help me understand how we could understand these
toxicological effects given that you are testifying before a
House panel today.
Dr. Beckham. I will note that I'm not a toxicologist, but
with that caveat, I think certainly there are--there is a large
research community that does toxicology and thinking about--
there was--for example, there was a paper published a couple
weeks ago where they measured micro and sort of nano plastics
in the air and found even in pristine environments that you can
breathe this stuff in. How that affects the human body, how
that affects animal life in general I think is still very
poorly understood. And from my perspective I think that Federal
research dollars could be put into the toxicology community to
understand those types of things because we don't know. We
simply don't know what the effects of those will be.
Chairwoman Stevens. We find ourselves with a plastic
paradox. OK. I wanted to capture that for the record.
And at this time I would like to excuse my distinguished
colleague, Ranking Member Jim Baird, who has an appointment to
make. Obviously, this has been a robust hearing, and we've
heard many rounds. I'm going to yield back the remainder of my
time. That concludes--oh, Mr. Sherman has another one? Do you
want to go again, Brad?
Mr. Sherman. I was just going to ask one.
Chairwoman Stevens. You can go again. Go ahead. I'm going
to cede 5 more minutes to my distinguished colleague, Mr. Brad
Sherman, who I am so glad joined us today, by the way. This is
the full Research and Tech Subcommittee in action. Thank you.
Go ahead, Brad.
Mr. Sherman. It's been over 40 years since the last Federal
law to promote national research and development program for
improving methods of collection and recycling of solid waste.
The law was a national effort to recover valuable petroleum-
based resources that were filling our landfills. It sounds like
a lot of what we're facing today except that the purport
volumes are exponentially larger, and the types of plastics are
different. We need to find the right balance between the
Federal Government having a mandate and States and localities
doing it their own way. What do you gentlemen feel is the
Federal role here both in research and in mandating procedures
at the State and local level? I'll go straight down, Mr.
Sincock.
Mr. Sincock. Well, I think you bring out a very valid
point. Just in looking at our own statistics for the city of
Plymouth, we've seen our materials that we've landfilled from
1992 go up from 1,648 tons to--in 2018 to 2,400 tons, but our
recycling has also gone up a little bit during that period of
time. So I think government--if the government is going to be
involved in things, there has to be a national standard of
what's acceptable. And I think from that--and industry can move
forward from there at least on the collection standpoint.
I agree with you on your plastic bottle there that you
bring with you. In our case we've got about 30 employees in our
city hall. One of our employees had the suggestion that we
replace the drinking fountain with one where you could fill up
your bottle. In just over a year, we filled up over 6,000
bottles.
Dr. Menon. Mr. Sherman, thank you very much for that
question. The Earth is our home, and charity begins at home.
Not every industry is profitable from the get-go. Sometimes
governments have to intervene and help start industry. This in
particular may be true when you're talking about ocean
plastics. It may not be profitable. There's no way to foresee
how technology changes and see how if things will be done
differently in the future. But as of now, if we have to clean
up the oceans, we have to pay the price. It is where we live.
So the burden falls on us, on all of us to help industry in
cleaning up the planet. Thank you.
Dr. Beckham. So I will echo those sentiments very strongly.
I think that one of the roles of the Federal Government is to
support research that will allow for revolutionary changes and
step changes in the way that we deal with today's plastics, as
well as redesign for tomorrow's plastics. And that kind of
fundamental research I think will be really critical for,
again, enabling a new industry in the United States using
chemical recycling.
Mr. Boven. Yes, thank you for the question. I would answer
your question echoing my comments earlier about definitions.
The Federal Government can help with definitions around what
recycling is. This will be important as, again, advanced
recycling technology is brought to the forefront.
Two, I would say recycling certification, meaning that the
advanced recycling systems that we're talking about
depolymerizing the product, putting it back into the front end
of the polymer manufacturing process, we want to be able to
certify what was recycled and then give those certifications to
our customer and so they can feel confident that they're
purchasing recycled material, much like, say, wind energy as an
example.
And last, I would say the Federal Government can help in
piloting programs. There's a lot of work being done at looking
at new, again, end-market applications for recycled plastic,
and so the government can help with piloting these programs to
bring them to scale. Dow, as an example, is doing work with
using recycled materials in roads and other durable
applications like that.
Mr. Sherman. I yield back.
Chairwoman Stevens. Before we bring this hearing to a
close, we obviously want to thank our distinguished witnesses
again for testifying before us on the Committee today. I think
you answered the tough questions as best as you could. You gave
us some things to think about. I believe that we're going to
meet the charge of this time. I believe that there is a
rallying call.
I represent a district in Michigan surrounded by freshwater
lakes. I'm in a State surrounded by freshwater lakes. And as
people hear the alarming statistics around the equivalent of a
trash can or--excuse me, it's a dispensary of trash being
dumped into the ocean per minute, that's alarming, going into
the farthest trenches of our ocean and seeing that there's
plastic waste there, that's not a result that any of us
necessarily want to leave. But that's why I think we call it a
plastic paradox because plastic has improved our lives. It has
made it so that we can have food security and food delivered
throughout our country and into the mouths of people and
medical advancements.
But we've got to ask ourselves where and how we are going
to meet this charge. Does it fully fall on the consumer? I
believe there are individuals who want to step up and
participate in recycling programs and find an altruistic value
in doing so because they should and because they have a
municipality that enables them to do that.
We have industry and public-private partnerships. We've got
certainly great expertise that's researching this and
understanding the chemical compounds. But we know we need to do
better, and so we can turn to our colleagues throughout Federal
Government and all of an interagency approach to meeting the
technological considerations.
I think, Mr. Boven, we'd certainly like to continue to hear
from you on the work that you are doing on the corporate side,
but as it matches with what the National Institute of Standards
and Technology is hopefully going to bring forward. And we will
continue to partner with you and support you. I will say $3.2
million with Dr. Menon goes a long way.
The record on this hearing will remain open for 2 weeks for
additional statements from Members and for any other additional
questions that the Committee may ask of our witnesses.
At this time, our witnesses are excused, and the hearing is
now adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 3:46 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
Appendix I
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