New white paper from Eastman spotlights ways to expand recycling.

"Three ways policymakers can renew the recycling system: The critical connection between public policy, advanced technologies, and recycling capacity" was developed by a team of public policy experts at Eastman, a global leader in advanced recycling technologies that can process and renew almost any kind of plastic. The white paper's authors analyzed gaps in the current recycling infrastructure for recycling plastic and the technology solutions and complementary policy changes that can close those gaps. A study by McKinsey & Company shows that only 12 percent of the 300 million tons of plastic produced annually is processed by traditional recycling in the United States – the rest goes to landfills or incinerators or, worse, ends up in the environment and waterways. The white paper outlines how smart policy reforms can enact critical change.

To create a truly circular economy where resources retain their value infinitely, our country needs to bring the 65% of waste plastic lost to landfills, incinerators, and the environment back into the production cycle. Technologies exist today that give new life to waste plastic, but without the right policies in place, these solutions will not reach their potential for good.

While traditional or mechanical recycling remains critical, the processes are limited to only certain types of plastic that can be used in a limited number of end-use applications. In addition, the current infrastructure for collecting and sorting is insufficient to process the vast amount of available plastic waste.

Advanced recycling technologies, like those at Eastman, can process the hard-to-recycle plastics that traditional recycling cannot, and these advanced technologies produce material with recycled content that is indistinguishable from the original.