AMI Consulting has published a new report on the international chemical recycling industry
The report provides a comprehensive overview of the current state of commodity polymer chemical recycling, market drivers, growth dynamics, as well as a forecast of future development.
The amount of plastic waste in the environment has become a major concern around the world. In recent years there has been a huge push towards sustainability and the ‘circular economy’. Legislative measures are being introduced to curb the production of plastic waste and include more recycled content in everyday products, with Europe leading the way. Significant volumes of waste have been exported to China, until in 2018 China introduced its ‘National Sword’ policy which banned the import of plastic waste, leaving many countries without a destination for their plastic waste. Additionally, many brands are looking to include more recycled content in their packaging.
Recycling technologies currently in operation, largely based on mechanical recycling, are not suitable for processing a significant part of post-consumer waste. However, new chemical recycling technologies are able to address this fraction.
AMI Consulting estimates that the global volume of post-consumer plastic waste was 215 million tons in 2019, of which just over 10% was recycled. Chemical recycling of plastics is a promising approach to meet recycling targets, and to introduce a circular economic model in plastics manufacturing. With chemical recycling, plastic material can be converted back into a polymeric raw material. Chemical recycling allows the recycling of plastic materials that currently cannot be mechanically recycled, including contaminated, multilayer and mixed plastics. Compared to landfills, chemical recycling is the best environmental option. There is undoubtedly a space in the waste hierarchy that chemical recycling must occupy.
Chemical recycling operations are currently underway around the world. Most of them are at laboratory or pilot scale, although several industrial-scale facilities will come into operation in the coming years. AMI Consulting has grouped chemical recycling operations into four technologies: depolymerization, dissolution (solvent-based purification), gasification, and pyrolysis. Dissolution-based recycling is technically a physical process as the polymer chain remains intact at all times.
Several companies are investigating each technology. There are already major projects underway in Europe and North America, and Asia is expected to gain substantial market share in the future, with advances tending to lag behind Europe and North America a few years. With this momentum, chemical recycling will establish itself as an important technology by 2030
AMI Consulting’s study ‘Chemical Recycling – Global Status 2020’ quantifies the global chemical recycling market in terms of the amount of plastic waste chemically recycled by region, polymer, and technology up to the year 2030. It also quantifies the amount of post-plastic waste. consumption potentially available for chemical recycling. Key trends and various factors affecting the market are examined in depth, and the activities of the major players currently operating in the market are analyzed.
