US – American multinational oil and gas firm ExxonMobil has commenced production at its advanced recycling facility in Baytown, Texas.
The facility uses proprietary technology to break down hard-to-recycle plastics and turn them into raw materials for new products.
According to ExxonMobil, the facility is capable of processing more than 80 million pounds of plastic scrap per year.
It is intended to support the circular economy for post-use plastics and help divert plastic waste from landfills including bubble wrap, motor oil bottles, and synthetic sports fields.
Karen McKee, president of ExxonMobil Product Solutions Co. said: “We’ve proven our proprietary advanced recycling technology at Baytown, and now we’re leveraging our scale and integration to increase production of certified circular plastics to meet growing demand.
“There is substantial demand for recycled plastics, and advanced recycling can play an important role by breaking down plastics that could not be recycled in traditional, mechanical methods.
“We are collaborating with government, industry and communities to scale up the collection and sorting of plastic waste that will improve recycling rates and help our customers around the world meet their sustainability goals.”
ExxonMobil began pilot operations at the Baytown facility in 2021. Since the start of the pilot operations, the company says it has recycled about 15 million pounds of plastic scrap at the facility. The firm is using its proprietary Exxtend technology to break down plastic scrap at the site.
According to ExxonMobil, the company has commercial contracts to sell certified circular plastics to customers around the world for use in food-safe plastic packaging, including collaborations with Sealed Air and Ahold Delhaize USA, Berry Global and Amcor.
The company helped form Cyclyx International LLC, a joint venture created to collect and sort large volumes of plastic waste and is investing in a first-of-its-kind plastic waste processing facility in Houston to help supply ExxonMobil’s Baytown advanced recycling facility.
To accelerate advanced recycling, ExxonMobil is a founding member of the Houston Recycling Collaboration, which brings government and industry together to increase access to recycling programs and expand infrastructure for mechanical and advanced recycling technologies.
The firm plans to build advanced recycling facilities at many of its other manufacturing sites around the world, which would give it the capacity to process up to 1 billion pounds of plastic waste annually by year-end 2026.
In addition, ExxonMobil is assessing facilities in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Beaumont, Texas; and Joliet, Illinois; as well as at sites in Belgium, the Netherlands, Singapore and Canada.
The company also is collaborating with third parties to assess the potential for large-scale implementation of advanced recycling technologies and opportunities to support improvements to plastic scrap collection and sorting in Malaysia and Indonesia.
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