Plastics recycling plant proposed for Susquehanna shoreline

Is a $1.1 billion plastics recycling plant proposed for Pennsylvania an innovative way to re-use plastics and keep them out of landfills, incinerators and waterways? Or will it help cement society’s reliance on plastics and create pollution concerns for the Susquehanna River?

The answer depends on who you ask.

Pennsylvania outcompeted other states to land what Houston-based Encina says will be the flagship for a global network of “advanced recycling” facilities. Over the course of a year, up to 450,000 tons of hard-to-recycle plastics — enough to fill an NFL stadium — would arrive via 80 truckloads a day from materials recovery facilities around the region. The items would include plastic bags, packaging, straws, ice cream and yogurt containers, potato chip bags and more.

Then a process called pyrolysis — high heat without oxygen — combined with an unspecified proprietary catalyst, would liquify, separate and purify the plastic’s molecules, the company says. It breaks them down into basic chemicals: benzene, toluene and mixed xylenes.

The compounds would be sold and shipped by train to customers who make new plastics that can be used in thousands of products. Potentially over and over. Unlike other advanced recycling plants in the U.S., Encina claims, none of the material would be sold as diesel fuel, synthetic oil or other forms of fossil fuel.

“Increasingly, customers are demanding sustainable practices across the product supply chain and life cycle,” said Encina CEO David Roesser. “What we manufacture helps reduce waste, offsets the need to extract virgin resources and helps manufacturers achieve carbon reduction goals.”

The company has operated a small-scale demonstration plant since 2016 in San Antonio, TX.

To build the Pennsylvania facility, the company has signed a long-term lease on 101 acres in a floodplain on an aggregate mining site along the Susquehanna River in Northumberland County, about 60 miles north of Harrisburg.

If it obtains all the necessary permits, Encina hopes to start operations in 2024. So far, one company, American Styrenics, has agreed to buy up to 250,000 tons of recycled resins a year.

In March, township officials denied the company’s request for a variance to build its 80-foot-high processing building in a 50-foot maximum height zone. While surprised by the denial, Encina officials expressed confidence it would only be a temporary setback.

Former Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf celebrated the project when it was announced in 2022.

“Not only will they be creating new, good-paying jobs, but they’re committed to doing it with an innovative approach that will lessen their impact on the climate and sustain a brighter future for all of us,” he said at the time.

But not everyone sees it that way.

The Encina plant does nothing to address single-use plastics that are the heart of the plastics crisis, said Tamela Russell, founder of the Pennsylvania-based group Move Past Plastic. The $1.1 billion would be better spent creating biodegradable packaging and establishing a re-use model in which plastic products are designed to be collected by manufacturers, refurbished, cleansed and used again.

“It’s just going to perpetuate using more plastics,” she said. “And it’s still just taking those environmental contaminants and just recycling them. It’s the same false recycling narrative. It’s not going to stop more production, which we must do.”

Alexis Goldsmith, of Vermont-based Beyond Plastics, said the pyrolysis process will produce greenhouse gases and emit toxic volatile organic compounds, which she claimed would end up either in the air or water.

She also called the Encina project “greenwashing.”

“The petrochemical industry sees the writing on the wall,” she said. “In order to divert political will from passing laws to reduce plastic use, they say chemical recycling is the solution. The real solution that we need is to reduce plastics production.” 

Danny Berard, the mayor of Northumberland, just downriver of the proposed plant, has said there are too many unanswered questions about how microplastics would be kept from entering the river, the extent and management of truck traffic and the financial stability of “a start-up company.” 

The Middle Susquehanna Riverkeeper Association has not taken a position on the project, but Riverkeeper John Zaktansky expressed concern. “There’s just so many red flags in this situation,” he said. “For one thing, we’re concerned with the massive number of plastics sitting on a site within a floodplain.”

He also is dubious about guarantees that PFAS, commonly known as “forever chemicals,” would not escape into the river from bales of plastics as they are washed and processed.

Zaktansky said his research of other advanced recycling initiatives launched around the country has shown that many run into problems.

At a public call-in session with Encina officials in March, residents raised concerns about air pollution, building in the floodplain, microplastic pollution, wastewater pollution and the plant’s water consumption — estimated at up to 2.5 million gallons daily.

Encina representatives said modifications would be made to protect buildings from flooding. Water withdrawn from the river would be treated and likely returned with better quality. A membrane bioreactor system would filter plastics from discharged water, and the water would be monitored before releases. None of the materials will contain PFAS, they said.

Air emissions would adhere to restrictions set by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. “Anything we are producing will be captured,” Roesser said.

Encina officials disagree that the plant enables more plastic production without addressing the heart of the excess plastics problem.

“We need a more refined approach where we reduce as much as we can, replace as much as we can and re-use as much as we can,” said Sheida Sahandy, the company’s chief sustainability officer. “But at the end of the day, at least in the short to middle term, there are some critical uses of plastics that none of these alternatives address.”