Plastics Europe discusses innovations in plastic recycling to achieve circular economy goals of the European Green Deal.
We are aware of and take very seriously societal concerns about the contribution of our industry to climate change, the challenge of plastic waste, and the need to ensure the sustainable use of plastics.
It is also important to recognise that plastics have a vital role to play in enabling the sustainability transitions and competitiveness of many sectors in Europe, and the European economy more broadly. The reality is that plastics remain irreplaceable for countless applications and sectors across renewables, building and construction, automotive, health, agriculture, and electronics.
European plastics manufacturers are committed to addressing the concerns about plastics and being part of the solution to enable a sustainable future that makes plastics circular, drives lifecycle emissions to net zero, and fosters the sustainable use of plastics.
The ‘ReShaping Plastics’ report, an independent analysis conducted by SystemIQ for Plastics Europe in 2022, set out different potential pathways towards net zero and circularity by 2050 while confirming that circularity is one of the fastest, most affordable, effective, and reliable methods for reducing plastic waste and GHG emissions in the plastics system.
The pathways established in this report have also helped Plastics Europe and its members develop a more comprehensive response to Europe’s Green Deal ambitions, but we cannot act alone. To complete the transition and remain competitive, Europe’s plastics system must accelerate and deepen its collaboration with policymakers to incentivise investment and innovation across the industry.
The transition to circularity across the plastics system is a generational-scale task, and we are under no illusions about the scale, complexity, and costs involved. This includes multiple supply chains, thousands of products, and companies – each with their own business strategies and models.
In order to meet this challenge, Plastics Europe developed a Plastics Transition Roadmap1 to align stakeholders and function as our North Star. Itestablishes an ambitious but realistic pathway to net zero by 2050 and circularity, including milestones for 2030, key actions, and indicators.
In terms of circularity, the roadmap projects that the substitution of fossil-based plastics will be gradual and could reach 25% in 2030 and 65% by 2050. It also sets-out a potential pathway to reduce GHG emissions from the overall plastics system by 28% by 2030 and towards net-zero by 2050.
While there is no ‘silver bullet’ solution to significantly reduce waste disposal and GHG emissions, a key action to remediate the current lack of high-quality waste needed to drive circularity is by fostering ‘design for recycling’ that would limit complex product designs with hard to separate mixed materials.
Upstream and downstream solutions should also be deployed together to increase effectiveness. This includes reuse that reduces single use applications, mechanical and chemical recycling, and plastics produced from biomass and carbon capture and utilization (CCU) process.
Significantly increasing the collection, sorting, and use of high-quality circular feedstock can reduce the dependence on fossil feedstocks and considerably lower the GHG emissions of the plastics system in the long term.
Driving advances in plastic recycling
While measures to enable circularity are critical, plastic recycling methods urgently need updates, as well. Most importantly, we’ll need to drastically increase the use of complementary forms of recycling, while investing and driving innovations in both mechanical and chemical recycling technologies.
When used as a complement to mechanical recycling, chemical recycling maximises the resource potential of plastics waste currently being sent to landfill and incineration. Even more significant, the European transition to a plastics circular economy cannot be achieved without a continent-wide roll-out of chemical recycling technology.
As an industry, we continue to play an active role in supporting multi-stakeholder initiatives that are advancing the status of circularity with projects such as CP Chem’s support for Infinity Recycling’s Circular Plastics Fund that’s aimed to accelerate the transition from a linear to a circular plastic economy by investing in advanced plastic recycling technologies.2
Partnerships are also forming within the industry to scale up chemical recycling technologies, as seen in the recent agreement between Neste, Borealis, and Covestro to convert discarded tires into high-quality plastics for automotive applications.3
Investing in circular feedstocks like biomass and CCU to reduce footprints is another critical step, exemplified by BASF’s new biomass-balanced ecoflex grade, which has a 60% lower product carbon footprint than the standard grade.4
Unlocking circularity investments and innovation potential
Whilst substantial progress has been made, there are very significant hurdles for us to overcome.
We need to work more closely with policymakers to urgently establish the policy and legislation necessary to stimulate the development of markets and incentivise investments and innovations that support a circular plastics and net zero system.
More concretely, we’ll need support in developing a waste management system fit for a net-zero and circular economy – such as mandatory targets for reuse or recycled content – to effectively increase the demand for circular business offerings. We also need a harmonised EU policy and regulatory framework that enables, rather than hinders, the industry’s transition.
A significant level of investment is planned for chemical recycling over the next five years – going from EUR 2.6 billion in 2025 to EUR 8 billion in 2030. Thanks to this industrial commitment, the production of chemically recycled plastics is estimated to reach 2.8 Mt in 2030, with pyrolysis and gasification technologies representing 80% of planned capacities.
To unlock greater investments in chemical recycling infrastructure and innovation, we urgently need legislative acceptance of chemical recycling, and the mass balance credit method for allocating recycled plastics to new products.
We must also address the competitiveness challenges facing the European industry. In the 1980s, European plastics production held one-third of the global share, but this has steadily decreased. The erosion in global competitiveness means Europe is gradually changing from an export to an import market, with significant implications for its strategic autonomy and sustainability transition.
Unless holistically addressed, this will increase our dependency on imports of plastics or plastic products which do not necessarily meet EU sustainability standards and threaten the viability of many downstream industries in Europe. It will also limit the ability of the European industry to invest in the transition.
The vision of Plastics Europe and its members is to create a sustainable plastics system that continues to meet consumer and societal demands, whilst supporting the transitions of many downstream industries, and remain a strategic asset for the European economy.
It is about creating a thriving, competitive, and sustainable plastics system in Europe through investment and innovation. With collective ambition and urgency, we believe this can be achieved.
References
- Read more about our Plastics Transition roadmap
- Read more about Circular Plastics Fund
- Read more about tire conversion tech
- Read more about biomass advancements
