Chemical Recycling Europe (CRE), the association representing chemical recycling companies across Europe, welcomes the publication of Joint Research Centre’s report “Economic viability of chemical recycling – Current and future perspectives”.

Chemical recycling as a complement to mechanical recycling

The report confirms the long stance of the association – chemical recycling is not a substitute for mechanical recycling, but a complement to it. It can process plastic waste streams – contaminated, mixed, or otherwise hard-to-recycle material – that mechanical recycling cannot handle for economical, technical or regulatory reasons.

The report also confirms that chemical recycling can deliver recyclate plastic of virgin-equivalent, food-contact-grade quality. This targets precisely on contact-sensitive and food-grade packaging segments, where the EU’s recycled content targets under the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) cannot be met through mechanical recycling alone.

Cost gaps reflect an early-stage industry, not its long-term potential

The report finds that chemically recycled polymers currently cost more than virgin material. This is because chemical recycling is a young, capital-intensive industry, which lacks optimization and amortized infrastructure that the petrochemical industry benefits from.

Related reading: Viridor closes European chemical recycling operations

CRE pointed out that the cost gap has to be addressed through supportive, well-designed policy measures during the critical scale-up phase. The regulation will enable the industry to scale.

As with other emerging industrial technologies, CRE expects the cost gap to narrow and performance to further improve over time:

• Costs will reduce as plants scale, further standardization & optimization drives down costs and further feedstock flexibility & oil quality management will improve economics.

• Yields will further improve, through technological learning and process innovation.

• Energy efficiency will increase, reducing both costs and environmental impact.

Policy priorities to unlock chemical recycling capacities

To unlock the capacity of chemical recycling, CRE summarized three policy-making priorities:

1. Finalize and implement mass balance rules: Swiftly implementing the fuel excluded mass balance methodology is the single most urgent enabler for the sector. Without it, investment decisions cannot be finalized with confidence.

2. Put in place measures that drive demand for EU-origin circular material: Having clear mechanism to ensure that the demand for circular products is met with genuine, EU-produced circular material.

3. Provide clarity on enforcement: Effective, proportionate and dissuasive measures to enforce compliance with recycled content obligations are essential. Without credible enforcement, the market signal needed to justify investment in chemical recycling capacity is undermined.

Together, these three measures will unlock the capacity of chemical recyclers in Europe, which is essential to deliver the recycled material volumes required under the PPWR and other legislation, such as the End-of-Life Vehicles Regulation.