A Bay Area startup sold a plastic recycling dream. Neighbors call it just another incinerator

The plan sounded like a magic bullet from the future to solve one of the world’s most vexing environmental waste problems. 

In Rohnert Park, just north of San Francisco, a startup company called Resynergi planned to use a form of “advanced recycling” to reuse plastic. Its process would chemically transform old plastic, blasting bits of it with microwaves until they turned into an oil that could then be used to make new plastic. 

But the process – known as pyrolysis – was a hard sell to Sonoma County neighbors, who protested so much that the company withdrew its application and now plans to move out of state. 

The fight that boiled over in Rohnert Park in recent months is a window into the tensions ahead for California as the state overhauls nation-leading regulations governing plastic pollution and packaging. (CalRecycle, formally known as the Department of Resources Recycling and Recovery , will hold a public hearing about those rules Oct. 7.) 

While California is establishing some of the most forward-thinking plastic responsibility and recycling rules in the country, a dirty secret is that most plastic recycling methods are ineffective at best and illusory at worst. 

Millions of tons of plastic go to the state’s landfills each year, and millions more are shipped to Southeast Asia, where plastic is rarely recycled. Instead it is illegally dumped, and often burned.

Last year, Attorney General Rob Bonta brought suit against ExxonMobil for “perpetuating the myth … that you can recycle plastics, including single use plastics, and that it’s sustainable and good for the environment … It’s not true. It’s a lie.” ExxonMobil has since countersued Bonta for defamation.

California’s regulators, meanwhile, are working to implement a 2022 state law that moves the state toward a circular economy for plastic – by making companies that produce packaging and single-use plastic items responsible for what happens to them after people throw them away. Those companies, along with environmental groups, have been weighing in as CalRecycle has been writing regulations, now years in the making.  

Recent comments by Gov. Gavin Newsom suggest the state is aiming to strike a balance, finding a way to encourage recycling companies while hitting the state’s goals – all while avoiding more air pollution or other environmental impacts. 

As for Resynergi, local and environmental advocates say that the way local, county, and regional regulators handled the company points up the challenges the state will face as it regulates plastic and defines whether and how it can be recycled. 

“It does make me nervous, since it took seven years to get any enforcement on a facility that’s a two hour drive from the Capitol,” said Nick Lapis, advocacy director for Californians Against Waste. 

A credible solution to plastic waste?

Resynergi’s departure came as Sonoma County officials began to ask more serious questions about its operations, almost a decade after the company first arrived. 

In 2017, company founder Brian Bauer chose Rohnert Park, a small, middle-class community surrounded by farmland, to develop and test his process.

He set up shop in a development called SOMO Village – a 200-acre neighborhood with homes, a high school, and commercial space. Developers market it as a climate-conscious place, built to be carbon-neutral, which Bauer said was a draw for Resynergi.  

In early conversations, according to Bauer, Sonoma County officials “suggested” his business could follow simpler recycling guidelines. Sheri Cardo, a spokesperson for Sonoma County’s Department of Health Services, confirmed the department had talked with Bauer about its operations as a recycling research and development site, and that his characterization was accurate.  

In 2023, when Bauer sought to expand operations, he approached the city of Rohnert Park’s planning division for permits. 

Officials told Bauer his facility was considered a heavy manufacturing site, and that Resynergi’s location – 600 feet from a school – demanded an environmental review, according to documents obtained by residents through a public records request. In a response late last year,  Resynergi argued that such a review could take too long, and moving quickly “could make or break substantial investment from a large strategic investor.”

Within a month, planning officials had flipped and were now siding with Resynergi, granting it a more flexible, less burdensome administrative use permit. The decision avoided additional public review. 

But to operate legally, Resynergi had to secure approval from county officials and the regional air district.

In California, pyrolysis is classified as a type of incineration, associated with toxic and hazardous waste. Businesses must obtain a solid waste permit from local authorities, who enforce the state’s public resources code. In the past, three facilities have received permits to use pyrolysis, two for the purpose of destroying medical waste. All are now closed, according to CalRecycle.

California counties issue waste permits on behalf of CalRecycle. The Bay Area Air District, formerly known as the Bay Area Regional Air Quality Management District, permits and controls pollution that microwaving plastic could produce.

County officials started looking into the company when they realized Resynergi’s plans would make the company a fully operational and “fixed component in the county’s waste system,” said Cardo, the county spokesperson. 

“Although your facility might be considered a recycling facility in vernacular language, it is not under state law,” wrote Christine Sosko, Sonoma County’s director of environmental health.

CalRecycle spokesman Lance Klug said in an email that Sonoma County’s response followed state standards.

But environmental advocates say the way city and county officials handled Resynergi reflects regulators’ confusion about the processes for advanced recycling  – confusion fueled by the plastic industry.  

Jane Williams, director of California Communities Against Toxics, argues that federal and state law make it clear that pyrolysis facilities have to follow rules as incinerators. “It’s really interesting for me to see, having worked on these incinerators for so long, how these guys pulled strings,” Williams said. “They pulled whatever out of their pockets so they could convince people this is a recycling facility.” 

The American Chemistry Council, a trade group supporting the plastic industry, disagrees. And Resynergi’s Bauer said he doesn’t think his company’s process counts as incineration. 

“Communities across California and the country are searching for credible solutions to plastic waste,” Bauer wrote in an open letter to the community. “This city has the chance to lead by example.” 

Community fears toxic air pollution 

People living in and near SOMO Village found out that Resynergi planned to burn plastic on a larger scale when the Bay Area Air District notified the public of the company’s permit application.

The community protested, filling city council rooms at each meeting and waving signs depicting polluting smoke stacks. Some parents spoke through tears to their city leaders. “Our air is not your experiment,” one poster read. 

Among the local opponents of Resynergi was Stephanie Lennox. She lives about 20 minutes from Rohnert Park in rural Forestville, but her two daughters go to Credo High School right next to the facility. She wondered about emissions and the risk of an explosion. 

“My Lord, don’t we need a solution to our global plastic pollution,” Lennox said. “But my daughters’ lungs are not part of your beta testing phase for your ‘world’s global plastic solution.’”

Local organizers said they wanted city and county leaders to follow state law and the federal Clean Air Act.  

When plastic is burned, additives like flame retardants or other chemicals that don’t break down can create toxic emissions, said Veena Singla, a researcher at the University of California San Francisco.

Resynergi applied to the regional air district to obtain a permit for pollution control equipment in April, after the company had already begun operating their technology.

In August, the air district issued three notices of violation to Resynergi for constructing and operating without a permit. 

Bauer admitted to operating the equipment without a permit. The company never burned plastic in Rohnert Park he said; it did burn plastic at “prototype levels” in Santa Rosa.

But, Bauer added, Resynergi was trying to follow the rules as he understood them. As a startup, he said, “you don’t even know if you will get a prototype to work. You’re also trying to figure out how the permitting process works.” 

Millions spent to sway regulations

Resynergi’s departure wasn’t because of a community outcry, Bauer said. The turning point, he said, was “the pull from other states; how they treated climate technologies such as ours …combined with the overall culture of accepting what we’re doing.”

Plastics manufacturers and industry advocates like the American Chemistry Council have campaigned to redefine terms and loosen environmental regulations for the process Resynergi is developing. After the lobbying, 27 states have reclassified pyrolysis as manufacturing instead of solid waste operations, said Davis Allen, a researcher for the Center for Climate Integrity. That classification helps operators get around federal air requirements, he added. 

Resynergi’s Bauer told CalMatters that “one of those (states) is a candidate,” and that the company will move out by the end of the year.   

An analysis by the climate accountability newsletter HEATED found the chemistry council and groups aligned with it have spent as much as $30 million to promote the concept of advanced recycling as a mainstream and established one. That language aims to sway not just state laws, but federal clean air policy as well.  

Between 2021 and 2022, when lawmakers were discussing plastic producer legislation, the American Chemistry Council spent more than $1.6 million on lobbying state legislators, according to publicly available data published by the Secretary of State.

The American Chemistry Council’s Ross Eisenberg says that pyrolysis and other chemical recycling processes do work. These processes turn “hard-to-recycle plastics into the raw materials for high-quality products while reducing greenhouse-gas emissions and fossil energy use during production compared with virgin production,” he said. 

“America’s plastic makers are investing billions of dollars to modernize and expand recycling capacity and improve efficiency,” Eisenberg said, adding that the companies are “advocating for smart policies that enhance collection and sorting so more plastics can be remade into new products.”

This year, the Environmental Protection Agency said it isn’t taking further action on the matter, but industry representatives said they’ll continue to lobby at the federal level.

Ambitious rules and tough realities for plastic

California’s goals to reduce plastic pollution and make producers responsible for plastic waste are ambitious in size, scope, and speed. Within seven years, state law seeks to reduce plastic packaging by 25%, make single-use plastic packaging 100% recyclable or compostable, and divert most of that packaging into recycling. 

Allen, from the Center for Climate Integrity, says laws like this can be a good idea – as long as regulators focus more on reducing plastics and less on recycling them. 

“Almost any solution that is based on the idea that plastics can widely be recycled just isn’t really going to work,” Allen said. “There just aren’t easily available solutions to a lot of the problems that limit the effectiveness of recycling.”

But in March, regulations aimed at achieving the state’s goals were dealt a setback after two years of hearings. The day they were due, Gov. Newsom directed CalRecycle to start the regulatory process over. 

The governor asked for changes “to minimize costs for small businesses and families – while ensuring California’s bold recycling law can achieve the critical goal of cutting plastic pollution,” said Daniel Villaseñor, a spokesperson for the governor, in an email to CalMatters.

The Plastics Industry Association and the American Chemistry Council hailed the governor’s announcement as an opportunity. “We believe California’s regulations should be clear, technology-neutral, and performance-based,” said the council’s Ross Eisenberg.

According to Klug, the CalRecycle spokesman, the state “remains committed to fostering business innovation that promotes a safe and clean future for all Californians.” 

But environmental organizations like the Monterey Bay Aquarium and Surfrider called the decision disappointing. 

Williams, the California Communities Against Toxics activist, said she’s concerned that more recent draft language may encourage pyrolysis facilities like Resynergi, which, she says, don’t belong in the state.   

If California “rolls out the red carpet,” she said, “The only thing that will stop a whole new fleet of incinerators being built in California now is open, persistent community opposition.” 

Resynergi also took part in CalRecycle workshops for the regulations. The company’s departure announcement praised the “innovative spirit of California … instrumental in the company’s growth.” 

Brian Bauer said he’s hopeful the state plastic regulations will ease regulations for companies like his, but he plans to return to California either way. 

“So it might be a couple years,” Bauer said. “We’ll be back to California in due time.”