Previous work examining upcycling on the regional scale for the US Midwest provides an interesting point of comparison for this national-scale analysis. For the analogous case which allows PET and HDPE to be processed by traditional methods, Ma et al. determined that the inherent value of mixed plastic waste is in the range of 336 -493 USD / tonne, whereas in our study we find plastic waste having a lower value range of 284 -395 USD / tonne. With all processing costs equivalent, this comparison suggests that transportation costs detract more significantly from plastic waste value in the national value chain solution. This is in part due to the deployment of fewer and more centralized processing technologies, which may be desirable from a capital cost minimization perspective. Such considerations invoke an important assumption of our modeling approach, which designs and infrastructure "from scratch" (without accounting for existing infrastructure). In a real implementation of upcycling, existing US MRFs would likely be incorporated, contributing to a deployment pattern based on regional needs rather than a nationally optimized framework. However, obtaining MRF data is difficult and complicates analysis.