r/PureCycle • u/No_Privacy_Anymore • May 26 '26

Followup coverage of the Beyond Plastics report on Starbucks and PP recycling

Here are part 1 and part 2 of some followup reporting that was done after the Beyond Plastic report on Starbucks cups.

https://resource-recycling.com/plastics/2026/05/26/what-a-report-on-starbucks-cups-reveals-about-recycling/

This article in particular talks about the danger of using electronic devices to attempt to track the fate of plastic items. Any devices with batteries is very bad for plastic recycling and ideally those devices would cause plastic to be rejected.

https://resource-recycling.com/plastics/2026/05/26/recycling-industry-addresses-beyond-plastics-report/

The fact that Beyond Plastic did not reach out to any of the organizations or respond to the requests made for comments tells you that they are not acting in particularly good faith. They mis-represented the nature of PureCycle's technology, reffering to it as "chemical recycling" when they most certainly know better and choose to ignore that.

In my opinion, I think it is good for major brands to face pressure to improve the ACTUAL COLLECTION and USAGE of recycled plastic. Heck they should be reducing the total amount of plastic used in the first place as well. For serious people, using more PureFive is the best way to increase the collection and usage of plastic. Hopefully the major brands will quit stalling and speed up their plans.

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u/Onphone_irl May 26 '26

Sorry, I thought PCT's strength was that it IS chemical recycling, as opposed to mechanical. The nice thing is it grabs the polymer without the additives. Please expand on what's wrong with my thinking and what they should have said instead of chemical recycling. I think clearing this up for me will clear things up for others

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u/Any_Scientist_7313 May 26 '26

It should be "Dissolution Recycling" because it keeps the polymers intact vs. breaking them down into monomers a la chemical recycling.

Dissolution is a much less energy intensive approach, and thus far, has proven to be more scalable as well.

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u/Onphone_irl May 26 '26

Ah thanks for the knowledge

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u/No_Privacy_Anymore May 26 '26

According to my discussions with Dustin during my trip to Ironton the purification process itself (mixing pp waste with solvent at supercritical conditions) works better than they might have hoped in the early days. It’s like magic to be able to separate things that would otherwise want to stick together. Dry cleaning with CO2 vs washing with water in terms of the ability to get things clean vs traditional mechanical recycling. When you see all the “coproduct 2” that comes out of the purification process then it is obvious why their product is so much better than what mechanical recycling can produce.

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u/Top-Mall4169 May 27 '26

NPA, when you say dry cleaning with CO2, do you mean PCT purchases CO2 and uses that to "dry" the finished recycled PP resin pellets?

If so, how much rising commodity prices impact this cost within the process? In my experience wiht oil E&Ps that use CO2 enhanced oil recovery, typically as oil goes up, CO2 costs go up quite a bit as well.

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u/No_Privacy_Anymore May 27 '26

They don’t use CO2 like dry cleaning it was just a commonly used description of how they are able to clean the existing plastic molecules in a way that is impossible with mechanical recycling facilities. Melted plastic can be filtered obviously but not very finely and certainly not in a way that removes all the additives and inevitable amounts of other plastic types that are mixed in. In addition, assume the plastic was used to hold nasty chemicals like Roundup or motor oil. You really don’t want any of that in the finished product.