The plan sounded like a magic bullet from the future to solve one of the world’s most vexing environmental waste problems. photo credit: Chad Surmick for CalMattersResynergi’s microwave incinerator at 1200 Valley House Drive, in Rohnert Park, on Aug. 26, 2025.
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, 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…