"Environmental advocates are bracing for a potential exemption from the Clean Air Act to promote so-called “advanced” or “chemical” recycling through pyrolysis."

"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."

James Bruggers reports for Inside Climate News April 1, 2026. [2]