Plastics have widespread societal, health and safety benefits, and will continue to be, but plastic waste is a challenge. ExxonMobil is one company addressing this issue by investing heavily in advanced recycling technologies, infrastructure, and partnerships aimed at transforming plastic waste into valuable resources.
“Less than 10 percent of plastics are recycled today, with the rest going to landfill, incineration or worse, straight into the environment,” said Kurt Aerts, business venture executive at ExxonMobil. “A circular economy would enable society to maximize the value and benefits offered by plastics while minimizing leakage into the environment.”
Aerts was speaking at the SAP Executive Digital Exchange Event for Energy & Utilities held recently in Rotterdam.
Advanced recycling
Aerts listed the many reasons recycling plastic is a lot more complex than it sounds. There are many different types of plastics, each with different chemical properties, making it practically impossible to recycle them all in the same system. Some melt at different temperatures, some contain contaminants, and incompatible types can’t be mixed.
Plastic waste is often dirty or mixed with food residues, labels, or adhesives, meaning it has to be cleaned thoroughly, which can make traditional mechanical recycling technically and economically challenging. Unlike glass or metal, plastic weakens each time it’s recycled and becomes less durable, so there is a limit to how many times a plastic product can be mechanically recycled. In addition, multi-layered plastics such as chip bags or juice cartons are impossible to separate into usable materials with current mechanical recycling methods.
And finally, virgin plastic made from fossil fuels can be cheaper than recycled plastic, especially when oil prices are low. That can make recycling less attractive for manufacturers. To help address some of these problems, the company developed a new advanced recycling technology called Exxtend.
“Normally, plastic waste is chopped into smaller pieces and melted down to form a limited range of new products,” Aerts explained. “ExxonMobil’s advanced recycling uses a chemical process that employes heat without oxygen to transform plastic waste at a molecular level into raw materials for use in manufacturing a wide array of new valuable products.”
This process, known as pyrolysis, takes place in ExxonMobil’s integrated manufacturing complexes. Through a mass balance attribution approach, a corresponding amount of these usable raw materials is credited to the virgin quality plastics sold as “certified-circular plastics.” This allows ExxonMobil to offer virgin-quality products that are linked to the amount of plastic feedstock it recycled. The resulting certified-circular plastic resin becomes part of the products and packaging used by brands and consumers and is ultimately collected and reused or disposed of through conventional methods.
Developing infrastructure
There are many elements needed to enable a circular economy for plastics, including better infrastructure, greater collection and sorting capacity, and continuous education on opportunities for reducing and reusing plastics.
Many countries, even developed ones, lack the infrastructure for proper plastic sorting, processing, or advanced recycling. This is why ExxonMobil is investing in plastic waste aggregation and sorting technologies to increase the waste feedstock available for advanced recycling. For example, the company recently opened a large-scale advanced recycling facility—one of the largest in North America—capable of processing up to 40,000 metric tons of plastic waste annually.
Plans include expanding this amount to 500,000 metric tons per year globally by 2027, driving greater circularity in the industry. The company has additional facilities in construction or under assessment in North America, Europe, and Asia.
The company is also investing in traceability systems to verify the origin of recycled feedstock and ensure compliance with environmental standards.
Collaborating with partners
According to Aerts, the lack of high-quality feedstock is one of the industry bottlenecks that limits the growth of advanced recycling capacity. “That’s why ExxonMobil is collaborating with others to address this challenge,” he said.
One example is a joint venture with Agilyx and LyondellBasell—called Cyclyx International LLC—that is developing unique Circularity Centers capable of accepting a wide range of plastic waste for sorting, processing, and formulating into custom feedstocks. These first-of-their-kind facilities will use proprietary technology to catalog thousands of chemical components, plastics, and additives in order to sort and blend custom formulations to meet unique specifications for plastic feedstocks.
Cyclyx sources all types of plastics from residential, community, commercial, and retail locations and works with companies, brands, and diverse participants in the value chain to increase participation in recycling programs. Cyclyx and its partners have been awarded ISCC Certification and are routinely audited according to rigorous standards, ensuring the delivery of high-quality materials produced.
ExxonMobil is also a founding member of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste – a global organization focused on developing scalable and economically viable solutions to address plastic waste in the environment.
Bottom line
ExxonMobil is not just dabbling in sustainable solutions —it’s embedding circularity into its core business strategy. By investing in advanced recycling technologies, forging industry alliances, and helping to create infrastructure for a circular plastics economy, ExxonMobil is positioning itself as a key player in creating a more circular economy for plastics.