Clean Seas West Virginia received last week a construction permit from the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WVDEP) for a plastics recycling facility. The facility will use a high pressure, high temperature process known as pyrolysis to break down used plastic into various chemicals, including components to create recycled plastic.
“The industry as a whole has encountered a lot of challenges, which to me speaks to questions about how commercialized this technology actually is, and of course more long-term how viable a solution it is to the plastics problem,” Tom Torres said. He is the chief of staff at the Ohio River Valley Institute, a nonprofit Appalachian think tank.
Clean Vision Corp., parent company of Clean Seas West Virginia, received a $1.75 million performance-based loan from the state in 2023, as well as a $15 million high-impact development project loan from the West Virginia Economic Development Authority in 2024. Torres said he was not aware of the full terms of those agreements being released publicly.
“It’s really important for stakeholders, including the residents that live near this facility, to understand the expectations that are being made of this facility,” he said.
Torres conducted an analysis of Clean Vision’s publicly available financial statements, including SEC filings. He said the company has announced at least 14 different facilities in eight countries, but only two of those have become operational.
“There’s a pretty big gap there in terms of what the company says it’s planning to do and what it’s actually been able to deliver to date,” Torres said.
Based on the company’s most recent financial disclosure, he said Clean Vision’s revenue was less than a fifth of the target previously announced by the CEO. Torres said the company has failed to expand operations at a facility in Morocco.
“Despite having a long history as a company, the parent company has not generated enough revenue to cover operations, and so it’s now accumulated a deficit of over $58 million as of the end of 2025,” he said.
Torres said his findings raise questions about this company’s ability to develop, maintain and expand the facility in Belle.
“Has it secured the financing needed to develop the facility? Has the company received the second pyrolysis unit? That’s more or less half of its processing capacity at Belle. And if not, when does it expect to receive that paralysis unit?” he said. “Is it on track to meet the employment requirements tied to their $1.75 million loan from the state? And when the facility will actually come online, which has been a bit of a moving target.”
First announced in 2023, Torres said the plant’s initial opening was set for 2024 but has been delayed half a dozen times since then.
