Plans for a facility in Erie, Pa., that would process plastic into smaller pieces to be burned in Gary, Ind., were thrown away earlier this month. The project would have been one of the largest such facilities in the U.S., taking in plastic from a 750-mile radius.
International Recycling Group (IRG) announced the cancellation of its plans on April 3, falling short of the $300 million it needed to raise for the project despite a large funding chunk secured eight months ago in August of 2024 when IRG received a $182 million loan from the U.S. Department of Energy through former President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).
“I am personally devastated after 18 years of working to bring this vision to a reality that we have failed to overcome these challenges,” said Mitch Hecht, the company’s founder and CEO, as reported by The Allegheny Front. IRG could not be reached for comment by SaportaReport.
IRG had framed the facility that came with a community benefits plan as a megaproject that would keep plastic out of landfills. The company stated that the facility would have been able to process 160,000 tons of plastic annually and had support from various local groups like the Erie NAACP and Urban Erie Community Development Corporation, according to the company’s social media posts.
The Allegheny Front also reports that IRG partially points to tariffs as a reason for project cancellation, saying that the tariffs were projected to raise project development costs.
A win or loss?
Regardless of the reasons for the cancellation, some environmentalists are celebrating the cancellation of the site as a win.
Environmentalists are typically associated with all things green — the outdoors, conservation, metal straws and, of course, recycling. This begs the question: Why do some environmentalists welcome the cancellation of sites that seemingly offer a role in reducing plastic waste in landfills?
Jess Conard, Appalachia director for Beyond Plastics, said that, in short, the recycling plant was not a solution to the plastic problem but rather would have been part of the problem.
“The IRA aims to reduce greenhouse gas emission, but we know that plastics are made from fossil fuels and are a source of climate pollution at every stage of their life cycle, and any project that is going to burn plastic… that’s not something that we want in any community, let alone any community that is near Lake Erie that already has a burden of pollution,” Conard said.
For Conard, the fight against chemical pollution is personal. She is a former resident of East Palestine, OH, where an infamous train derailment incident in 2023 saw the contents of over 50 railcars collide — 11 with dangerous chemicals — and pollute air, water and soils in the area.
Conard, a medical speech pathologist by training, cites the environmental disaster and subsequent displacement from the area as the catalyst for her joining Beyond Plastics and taking on the fight against plastic waste pollution. It’s also one of the reasons she and her constituents opposed the facility so strongly.
While the project did receive local support from certain groups, Beyond Plastic said there was equally strong pushback and skepticism from residents, citing concerns about the use of taxpayer dollars and pollution.
“A lot of local residents raised an eyebrow when this was first proposed in their community,” Conard said. “Basically folks were concerned about the pollution. What we were also able to educate them on is that this would increase diesel emissions from truck traffic, microplastics, nanoplastics.”
The facility would have reportedly mechanically separated certain types of plastics, with the rest being turned into a product, “CleanRed,” that could be used in the steelmaking process. Some of the recycled plastic products, however, would be burned and emitted into the air — a fact that makes some uneasy. Places known colloquially as “Cancer Alley” and “Refinery Row” have become infamous for their high volume of petrochemical facilities and their links to high rates of disease and pollution.
Conard said that Erie residents reached out to Beyond Plastics through local affiliate organizations and networks and asked for their help. Additionally, the organization connected with residents in Indiana where the plastic product would be used in the steelmaking process, with concerns about how the burned plastic in those facilities would affect the environment as well.
“There was a plurality of community opposition, and that’s really important when national groups collaborate with local groups,” Conard said, adding that they joined hundreds of other environment groups in writing a letter and sending it to the former Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, urging the Department of Energy to rescind the loan guarantee.
The request came partly, Conard said because there was allegedly no National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) review before the loan was promised — something that may have halted the promise of funds due to environmental concerns.
“I think it’s really challenging to understand how this loan got through,” Conard said. “Burning plastic is not a climate solution, and we need to move past these faux solutions and stop funding them with taxpayer dollars.”
“Gary Advocates for Responsible Development joins with Erie, Pennsylvania, community members and state and national environmental organizations in celebrating the cancellation of the IRG proposal to process plastic waste in Erie and transport the so-called ‘CleanRed’ waste product to Gary, Indiana, to burn in a U.S. Steel GaryWorks blast furnace,” said Dorreen Carey, volunteer for Gary Advocates for Responsible Development in a statement. “Burning plastic waste in the blast furnace would have emitted additional health-harming toxic emissions to the already polluted air of Gary and surrounding Northwest Indiana communities.”
If not this, then what?
Though the facility was scrapped, the question remains: what will happen to the plastic waste being produced, and will it continue being produced?
According to Beyond Plastics, part of that answer lies in the latter half of the question.
“I want to be really clear when I say that recycling things like aluminum and paper and glass are all really important pieces of infrastructure in our solid waste management system, but plastic recycling doesn’t work today. It never worked, and it never will work because there are 16,000 plus different chemicals that go into making plastics, and those plastic chemicals are used for different colors, different durabilities, different hardiness, etc.,” Conard said. “What we like to explain to people is that we need to stop producing so much plastic.”
According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s latest available data from 2018, paper and paperboard account for over 66 percent of all municipal solid waste that is recycled, followed by metals at nearly 13 percent. Plastics account for less than five percent of all municipal solid waste despite accounting for over 12 percent of all solid waste generated at around 35 million tons in 2018. Most estimates believe that number has risen since then.
Ensuring that the overall amount of plastic generated declines is top priority, especially as no commercially viable and environmentally friendly way of disposing of all these combinations of plastic has been widely adopted.
This is especially true for single-use plastics, Conard said, which account for nearly 40 percent of plastics that are used. At a minimum, she said, reducing the use of single-use plastics like party cups could lead to more reuse of other plastic products built for continued use, which has a lower environmental footprint than recycling.
Recycling is undoubtedly here to stay for many materials — the case for it is strong. Plastics, it seems, is not one of them. But with the mountains of plastic already produced and thrown away, the answer isn’t as straightforward as one might hope — in large part to just how complicated they are to effectively recycle.
“Plastic contains so many chemicals that it’s really not able to be put into a machine and come out as a plastic bottle or a pair of tennis shoes,” Conard said.
Still, some would argue recycling of plastic is necessary and better than not recycling at all. Ultimately, the issue is a complex one — especially given that many people have been sold on the idea of recycling plastics all their lives.
For now, Beyond Plastic stresses reuse and reduction of plastic production as the most effective tools in the toolbox against waste and pollution.
At the time this story was published, IRG’s website and phone number were not functional and could not be reached for comment. It remains to be seen what IRG will do with any plastic collected in anticipation of the facility.
Note: The writer of this story is a current ORISE fellow for the U.S. Dept. of Energy but started after the date of the loan guarantee and has no connection to the personnel involved with the loan mentioned in the story.
