ExxonMobil starts operations at advanced recycling plant in Texas

ExxonMobil Corp., Irving, Texas, has started operations at its large-scale postuse plastic 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.

“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,” says Karen McKee, president of ExxonMobil Product Solutions Co. “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, ExxonMobil says it has recycled about 15 million pounds of plastic scrap at the facility. The company 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.

ExxonMobil helped to form Cyclyx International LLC, which is a joint venture to collect and sort large volumes of plastic scrap and is investing in a plastic scrap processing facility in Houston to help supply ExxonMobil’s Baytown advanced recycling facility.

Additionally, ExxonMobil plans to build advanced recycling facilities at many of its other manufacturing sites around the world, which the company says could give it the capacity to process up to 1 billion pounds of plastic scrap annually by the end of 2026. ExxonMobil is assessing facilities in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Beaumont, Texas; Joliet, Illinois; 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.