When former top Environmental Protection Agency official Judith Enck noticed a cavalcade of chemical and plastics industry lobbyists visiting the agency’s Washington headquarters in February, she wondered what could be up.

An answer came weeks later: The agency is moving toward resurrecting a proposal from the first Trump administration to ditch Clean Air Act regulations involving one of the industry’s go-to methods for chemically processing plastic waste into new industrial feedstocks or fuels.

The EPA is curiously approaching this by embedding a request for comments on so-called “advanced recycling” via a method known as pyrolysis in a rulemaking on an entirely different category of waste incineration.

“I thought, could it be a mistake, or are they quietly trying to push this through?” Enck, a former EPA regional administrator during the Obama presidency, wondered in an interview on Tuesday. Just one paragraph related to advanced recycling of plastics was included in a 17-page Federal Register notice for a proposed rule on wood incineration.

Either way, the stakes are significant, according to industry and environmental advocates alike.

For several years, industry officials have pushed chemical processing of plastic waste as a primary solution to the global plastic waste crisis, while advocating for regulatory relief at the state and federal levels. The industry has also pressed for such processing to be a pillar of a possible global plastics treaty.

“We support policies that recognize the products of advanced recycling as recycling and policies that recognize advanced recycling as a highly engineered manufacturing process that can produce new virgin equivalent plastics and chemicals,” according to the website of the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s primary lobbying group in the United States.

But environmental advocates view much of what the industry calls either chemical recycling or advanced recycling—and particularly the method known as pyrolysis—as a dirty, polluting sham.

“It’s not recycling,” said James Pew, director of the federal clean air practice at the environmental group Earthjustice. “To the extent these incinerators produce anything significant other than toxic pollution, a very small portion of the plastic waste they burn is turned into an oily waste that can be fed back into the chemical production process or burned [as] dirty fuel. And it encourages unlimited production of single-use plastics.”

The EPA’s movement toward easing clean-air rules to boost chemical processing of plastic waste comes amid growing concerns about a global plastics crisis.

The United Nations Environment Programme has estimated that the world produces 430 million metric tons of plastic each year, over two-thirds of which are short-lived products that soon become waste. A growing amount, or 139 million metric tons in 2021, gets tossed after just a single use.

Plastic production is set to triple by 2060 under a “business-as-usual” scenario, and less than 9 percent is recycled. Plastic production and the mismanagement of plastic waste contribute to climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution, U.N. officials have concluded.

Scientists have also found the smallest of plastic particles inside human bodies, increasing the risk of respiratory, reproductive and gastrointestinal problems and some cancers.

Plastics’ Chemical Recycling Problem

Because plastics are made of thousands of chemicals, they are not easily recyclable. Most plastic recycling is done through a mechanical process that separates certain types by chemical composition, then cleans, shreds, melts and remolds them.

Pyrolysis, or the process of decomposing materials at very high temperatures in an oxygen-free environment, has been around for centuries. Traditional uses range from making tar from timber for wooden ships to transforming coal into coke for steelmaking.

More recently, major oil companies and small startups alike have sought to develop the technology as an alternative for recycling a wide variety of plastic waste, with limited success and serious pushback from environmental interests.

A 2023 report from Enck’s Beyond Plastics and the International Pollutants Elimination Network examined 11 chemical recycling plants operating in the United States. Noting low output of recycled plastics and challenges such as fires and spills at production units, the report concluded the technology “has failed for decades, continues to fail, and there is no evidence that it will contribute to resolving the plastics pollution crisis.”

The chemical industry, however, has been steadfast in its backing of chemical recycling, including the pyrolysis method. On the same day the EPA announced it was developing a new rule on advanced recycling, the American Chemistry Council praised the agency. Since no oxygen is involved in pyrolysis, the group said, the process cannot be considered incineration and should not be regulated as such.

“These advanced recycling technologies convert used plastic into valuable feedstocks to make new products, rather than combusting the plastic for energy purposes or landfilling it,” said Ross Eisenberg, president of an arm of the council called America’s Plastic Makers, in a press release.

Sixteen Industry Lobbyists Visit EPA

The details of what the EPA will propose have not yet been revealed. But the agency’s March 17 announcement and supporting documents point to the kind of regulatory relief it sought to provide during the first Trump term—before running out of time.

Pyrolysis has largely been regulated as incineration for three decades and has therefore had to meet stringent emission requirements for burning solid waste under the federal Clean Air Act.

In the final months of the first Trump administration, the EPA proposed an industry-friendly rule change stating that pyrolysis does not involve enough oxygen to constitute combustion, and that emissions from the process should therefore not be regulated as incineration.

In 2023, the Biden administration reversed course after much criticism from environmental groups and some members of Congress.

The agency that year noted that it had “received significant adverse comments” on the provision. In taking final action to withdraw the proposal, the agency said the move would “prevent any regulatory gaps and ensure that public health protections are maintained.”

The EPA’s recent request for comment on pyrolysis was included in a rule-making involving incinerators that burn wood or yard waste, which are sometimes used after natural disasters such as hurricanes. “Revising the definition would clarify that the … rule does not regulate pyrolysis units used in advanced recycling operations,” the agency said.

Beyond Plastics counted 13 representatives from chemical companies or lobbying associations on the EPA headquarters visitor log for Feb. 10, a month before the announcement. Three senior officials from the American Chemistry Council visited on Feb. 12.

“While communities across the country are dealing with the health and environmental costs of plastic pollution, the industry appears to have a direct line to the agency that is supposed to protect us,” Enck said. “These visitor logs are particularly concerning at a time when the Trump administration is rolling back environmental protections and is quietly proposing to remove Clean Air Act requirements from so-called ‘chemical recycling’ facilities. Why did the EPA bury such a major proposed change?”

A written statement from the EPA press office said existing solid waste incineration and pyrolysis regulations were vague, and that the agency is seeking information on an “appropriate remedy.”

The agency has scheduled an online virtual public hearing for April 6.

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Matthew Kastner, senior director of media relations for the American Chemistry Council, pointed to occasions in 2023 and 2024 when Enck appeared on the EPA visitor log. Both his group and hers, he said, “have the right under the First Amendment to petition the government.”

He added that the council’s member companies are regulated by the EPA, “thus engagement on issues ranging from compliance to policy development is both appropriate and expected.”

Earthjustice’s Pew is concerned that the EPA will exempt pyrolysis units from Clean Air Act permitting and any requirement to measure or report their emissions. The result would be, he said, “a perverse incentive” to build more of them.

“As a practical matter, this definition change would mean EPA is completely deregulating a whole class of incinerators, these so-called pyrolysis units,” he added. “And their pollution is really toxic.”