"Environmental advocates are celebrating the cancellation of the International Recycling Group’s project in Erie, PA"
"PITTSBURGH — International Recycling Group (IRG) has announced that they will cancel a planned plastic waste processing facility in Erie, Pennsylvania, due to President Trump’s federal funding cuts and tariffs, among other reasons.
The facility, slated to be built in a former Hammermill Paper Property less than a mile from Lake Erie, would have collected 160,000 tons of mixed plastic waste from a 750-mile radius and ground it into smaller pieces of plastic to be either burned in steel mills in Northwestern Indiana or sold for other uses.
Proponents of the plant hoped it would create local jobs and help reduce plastic waste, while opponents called it a “false solution” that would turn plastic waste into climate-warming and health-harming air pollution.
“Trucking plastics across the country to burn in blast furnaces under the guise of ‘recycling’ was and will always be a complete false solution and greenwashing attempt,” Susan Thomas, director of policy and press at Just Transition Northwest Indiana, said in a press statement."
Kristina Marusic reports for Environmental Health News April 10, 2025.
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