03/21/2025

Recycling Collection Paused, Some Expansions Probed As Trump Halts Biden-Era Loans

Plastics News | Steve Toloken | March 18, 2025

Recycling Collection Paused, Some Expansions Probed As Trump Halts Biden-Era Loans

International Recycling Group is pausing some operations at its proposed plastics recycling facility in Erie, Pa., blaming uncertainty over the status of a $182 million federal loan that's caught in a political dispute over green industrial policy in Washington.

IRG has suspended its community plastics recycling collection in Erie as it waits to hear whether President Donald Trump's administration will lift its pause on green manufacturing funds awarded during Joe Biden's term in office.

In July, Biden's Department of Energy awarded IRG a conditional loan of $182 million to build a $300 million-plus plastics recycling plant, but on Jan. 20, Trump put a broad, 90-day pause on many DOE loans as he and Republicans in Congress questioned whether Biden was rushing the spending.

Now IRG and its collection subsidiary, newBin, say they are putting their recycled plastic collection efforts on hold while federal funding issues are sorted out.

"Due to uncertainty related to continued support by the federal government, we have had to put all collection activities on hold for the time-being," the company said. "Plastics recycling is dependent on public policy decisions, including continued federal and state financial support."

IRG has said the federal loan is key for the project. The company and its chairman and CEO, Mitch Hecht, did not return calls and emails for comment.

Green industrial policy dispute

The IRG loan is caught up in a broader political dispute over federal green funding.

Trump aides and Congressional Republicans have questioned the Biden loans, with a December letter from House Republicans decrying what they called Biden's "rush-to-green" agenda pushing out money under the DOE's Loan Program Office (LPO).

A Jan. 20 executive order from Trump, Unleashing American Energy, included a section titled "Terminating the Green New Deal" that paused disbursement of funds like the IRG loan, awarded under both the Inflation Reduction Act and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. Both had been signed into law by Biden.

Trump's new Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, told Bloomberg News in February that he was reviewing the loans.

"We will follow the law," Wright said. "What I'm doing right now is looking at what is the status of those loans, what is the status of those projects. Things that are half pregnant, that are going on, we will continue to honor the law."

He said he has to "manage what I've inherited. And then there's a lot of monies uncommitted or early on, and of course, those will be deployed to advance the president's agenda of affordable, reliable, secure energy."

Trump's order said funds from those laws can't be given out until the director of the Office of Management and Budget and the Assistant to the President for Economic Policy sign off.

The Trump administration has, however, started to release loans on a handful of projects.

On March 17, it released funding for what reports said was the second major disbursement, $57 million for a nuclear power plant.

IRG hopes for limited pause

IRG's newBin unit said it hoped its own pause would be temporary.

"We hope that this will only be a limited pause and look forward to restarting collection at some time in the future," the company said. "We thank you all for your efforts to reduce plastic pollution and return waste plastics to be recycled."

IRG said the plant would produce both recycled plastic and a material that will replace coke in the steel-making process.

IRG has plastics industry financial backing.

An IRG release in 2020 announcing the project said that Erie-based injection molding company Plastek Group and Erie Insurance made separate investments totaling $9 million. Plastek executives said they wanted to secure supplies of recycled materials for their products.

Environmental groups in October lobbied the Biden DOE to reject the IRG loan, while Hecht defended the project in a November op-ed in Plastics News.

Eastman eyes Trump support

Another plastics project that received similar DOE funding from the Biden administration struck a positive tone on its prospects.

Eastman Chemical Co. and the DOE announced in 2024 that the company would receive $375 million from Biden's IRA and infrastructure laws to build a $1.2 billion chemical recycling plant in Longview, Texas.

Eastman Chairman and CEO Mark Costa told stock analysts in a Jan. 31 earnings call that the company had already received some DOE funding: "We feel like we're on a good track there."

In a March 18 email, spokesperson Kristin Parker said Costa's assessment is unchanged.

"We feel strongly that our project will be supported by the Trump Administration as it is an investment in the U.S. industrial base, a demonstration of our continued commitment to growing the U.S. economy, onshoring critical supply chain products and bringing high-paying jobs to Longview," Parker said.

"We are already under contract with the DOE and continue to execute our deliverables on schedule. This project is important to Eastman's circular strategy of helping to fight the plastic waste crisis with our innovative technology and capabilities," Parker said.

The Longview plant would depolymerize plastic waste and create "virgin-quality" materials for packaging and textiles, Eastman said.

Entek loan attracts attention

Another plastics-related DOE project, a plan by extruder maker Entek to build a facility in Indiana to make battery separator materials, was mentioned in the Dec. 4 letter from Congressional Republicans asking Biden to halt giving out loans after Trump's electoral victory in November.

Lebanon, Ore.-based Entek and the Biden DOE in July 2024 announced a $1.2 billion loan to finance a facility in Terre Haute, Ind., to make polymer film for lithium-ion battery separators, primarily for electric vehicles.

On Nov. 22, after Trump won the election but before he was inaugurated, Entek's Lithium Separators LLC unit announced that it had received its direct loan payment of up to $1.2 billion from DOE.

"The project will make a significant contribution to domestic separator capacity and help U.S. EV battery manufacturers satisfy the Inflation Reduction Act's domestic content rules under the 30D Clean Vehicle Credit," Entek said at the time.

Entek officials did not return a call and email seeking comment.

The Republicans' letter, sent by Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., who at the time was chair of the House Committee on Commerce and Energy before retiring, criticized the Biden administration for "scrambling" to close out the DOE loans and said it placed taxpayers at risk if loans are not properly vetted.

It mentioned the Entek loan in two footnotes.

"On election day, the American people rejected the Biden-Harris administration's rush-to-green agenda," the letter said. "To honor the will of our electorate and facilitate an orderly transition, we insist that the Biden-Harris administration cease its campaign to quickly distribute federal funding before the incoming administration takes office."

But 25 House Democrats defended the DOE loans in a Feb. 13 letter to Energy Secretary Wright, arguing that canceling the loans would be illegal and would hurt U.S. competitiveness against China in industries like electric cars.

The Democrats' letter, led by Rep. Sean Casten, D-Ill., noted the Entek loan as one of several under the DOE's Loan Program Office that should not be canceled.

"The stakes in the continuation of the LPO could not be higher," the Democrats said. "Today, China dominates the booming global market for new energy technologies, thanks to years of on-again-off-again support for new energy technologies by the United States government."

The Democrats' letter said the LPO was established by President George W. Bush and has in the past given out loans to both Ford Motor Co., for $5.9 billion, and Tesla Motors, for $465 million, to support electric vehicle manufacturing.