WASHINGTON (March 25, 2024) – With unanimous bipartisan support in both chambers, Wyoming became the 25th state to adopt legislation ensuring that advanced recycling facilities are transparently and properly regulated as manufacturing operations.
The American Chemistry Council (ACC) is pleased that with SF 80 becoming law, half of the United States is welcoming innovative recycling technologies that allow plastics to be remade, again and again.
“Advanced recycling technologies present a new opportunity to attract new investment, expand our industrial operations and create new jobs,” said Sen. Eric Barlow (R), the sponsor of the bill. “Wyoming is blessed to have an existing transportation system in place where we can efficiently bring in materials like post-use plastics and transform them into the basic raw materials that can become new products. SF 80 sends a signal to industry that Wyoming supports innovation and economic development.”
America’s Plastic Makers® have set an ambitious goal for 100% of U.S plastic packaging to be reused, recycled or recovered by 2040. A 2021 report by Closed Loop Partners estimated that advanced recycling could double the plastics packaging recycling rate in the U.S. and Canada by 2030.
Advanced recycling is a manufacturing process that uses chemistry to enable significantly more plastics to be recycled than traditional recycling technologies, including often hard-to-recycle films and mixed plastics. Instead of having to send these valuable plastics to landfills, technologies used in advanced recycling enable recyclers to convert used plastics back into raw materials to produce new virgin-equivalent plastics and chemical products.
Plastics are too valuable to waste. Keeping used plastic out of landfills and out of the environment is important to our industry, which is building an economic model that places value in remaking them into new products. The regulatory certainty provided now in Wyoming encourages investments by businesses to build these facilities, which can easily exceed $200 million in capital costs.
SF 80 establishes these technologies remain subject to applicable manufacturing regulations and applies a regulatory framework for advanced recycling facilities that welcomes future investment in Wyoming.
In a short budget session, the bill was one of few policy priorities that was considered. ACC thanks Sen. Barlow for sponsoring SF 80 and applauds Wyoming’s state legislators and Gov. Mark Gordon for recognizing the value of advanced recycling and for passing this important legislation.
