This article appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of Plastics Recycling Update. Subscribe today for access to all print content.

In the past decade, we’ve seen a wave of textile recyclers emerge, such as Reju, Syre, Eastman, Evrnu, Ambercycle, Ravel, Protein Evolution, Teraform, SixOne, and others. These companies seek to fill a gap in textile recycling to meet rising demand for recycled fibers, which among other sustainable materials, is projected to soar five-fold to 163 million tons by 2030, according to the Textile Exchange. This demand is driven by a combination of corporate sustainability goals and impending policy.

Despite strong forecasted demand, recycled content in textiles is still very low, with the majority coming from recycled PET bottles. And because recycled bottle volumes are inelastic (since consumers are not very good at recycling), RPET is in limited supply and faces heavy competition from the packaging industry, which is striving to comply with recycled content mandates.

The shortage of RPET has sparked interest in finding alternative sources. Polyester textiles could offer a solution. After all, textile waste is growing quickly, and polyester is the dominant fiber in the market. To capture these polymers and recycle them in new fibers for textile production, chemical recycling techniques have shown promise at lab and pilot scale. While mechanical recycling is still preferable from a cost and energy perspective, its applications in textile-to-textile recycling are limited.

How much textile waste is available?

RRS and Fashion for Good conducted a fiber composition analysis of U.S. postconsumer textiles and found that over half are suitable for fiber-to-fiber recycling, meaning they are single-layer items with at least 80% purity of a given target fiber (cotton, polyester, nylon, or polycotton).

With Americans generating 80-100 lbs per capita per year and growing, that makes 6 million to 10 million tons per year of textiles suitable for chemical recycling. That said, we want to make sure textiles go to the best destination: Anything reusable is sent to reuse first, anything repairable is sent to repair, anything suitable for the reclaimed wiping cloth industry is sent for wiper conversion, and anything suitable for mechanical textile-to-textile recycling is mechanically recycled. These applications all fall higher on the waste hierarchy. The percentage that all of the above represents is unknown, so ultimately, the volumes available for chemical textile recycling are unknown.

Nevertheless, without a recycling end market for textiles, we cannot achieve circularity.

Scaling textile-to-textile recycling

This emerging market is rife with challenges. First, scaling these technologies requires significant investment. In 2024, Syre closed a Series A funding round of $100 million. Circ raised over $55 million in the past couple of years, and Ambercycle has received over $55 million in funding since its start in 2015. The technology R&D, industry buy-in and construction of pilot plants and commercial scale facilities are expensive. The high capex and yet-to-be-achieved economies of scale mean that pricing cannot compete against virgin raw materials.

Second, recycling facilities are most cost-effective at scale, which means they rely upon highly functional feedstock supply channels that can provide on-spec feedstock. In a landscape where textiles are primarily exported for sorting and grading, the requisite sorting and pre-processing infrastructure in the U.S. is lacking and therefore must either be developed, or the business case for an international textile-to-textile recycling market must be made. If sited domestically, textile recycling facilities ideally would draw textiles from local suppliers, which translates to the need to build automated fiber-sorting facilities. If sited abroad, textiles collected here must be shipped, and the shipment of so-called waste is being increasingly regulated, posing a potential risk to the ability to export it.

Third, as a first-of-a-kind solution, chemical recycling relies on the carefully timed curation of a new ecosystem. Chemical recyclers must prove their business models, demonstrate ability to move from lab scale to production scale, show that they can produce quality outputs capable of being integrated into existing textile manufacturing supply chains, and convince the public, regulators and nongovernmental organizations that their processes yield net positive environmental impact.

Finally, product sales in particular remain a puzzle. Integration of new fibers into the supply chain is difficult because it requires testing and iteration to ensure compatibility with existing manufacturing practices, and yarn spinners are often unable to accommodate the interruption of operations to test unproven sources of supply. Getting the brand involved can help ease this process, as brands may have the ability to influence the choice of Tier 4 suppliers down through the supply chain.

Policy as a market driver

The textile-to-textile recycling industry is in its infancy, and we need to be cognizant of the very real challenges it faces while also pushing for adoption. It can be compared to the plastics recycling industry three decades ago. In fact, chemical recycling technologies are not new. They’ve been around for years and in some cases decades. Until now, they have not had a viable business case in the plastics or textile recycling industries — and whether that changes with the onslaught of new circular economy policies, legislation and corporate mandates remains to be seen.

California’s Responsible Textile Recovery Act of 2024 (S.B. 707) is expected to shift market dynamics of used clothing and textiles in the U.S. by increasing collection rates, funding the development of sorting and processing infrastructure and incentivizing sustainable attributes like recycled content through eco-modulated fees. New York and Washington are both considering similar bills. Extended producer responsibility laws are also spreading across Europe. While EPR is a long game — the soonest we’ll see commercial impacts of EPR on the availability of textile-based recycled content is circa 2030 — it has significant potential to change incentives and unlock new business models.

Also relevant in the policy realm is how chemical recycling is being regulated. About half of the states in the U.S. regulate chemical recycling facilities as manufacturing facilities, which can ease the permitting process and hold the facilities accountable to the same environmental standards as other industrial facilities. In other states, there is contentious debate over the legal definition of recycling, whether it includes chemical recycling and, if so, which forms of chemical recycling it includes. This definition may affect whether textiles recycled this way count toward the state’s diversion rates, and whether the fibers produced by those recyclers can be counted as recycled content.

The road ahead

Despite the many challenges, timing seems to be right for textile-to-textile recycling. We’re just now thinking in a coordinated way about textile collection systems, just now starting to build the infrastructure and just now bringing all the right people to the table. Success requires coordinated efforts. Brands that prioritize design for end of life and uptake of recycled content will likely emerge as market leaders. Policymakers that work alongside the industry in developing smart and effective policy can create an enabling environment through legislation and funding. And supply chains that open their doors to recycled content can mitigate the risks of volatile raw commodity markets.

The topic is even attracting federal attention. In 2024, Congresswoman Chellie Pingree of Maine alongside Reps. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez from Washington and Sydney Kamlager-Dove of California launched the Slow Fashion Caucus, the first congressional group dedicated to implementing climate-smart policies to reduce, repair, reuse and recycle textiles. At the end of last year, the U.S. Government Accountability Office released a landmark report on textile waste in the country. It recommended the establishment of an interagency mechanism to drive textile circularity and called on Congress to allocate resources and authority to tackle this growing issue effectively.

There are also efforts led by the National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop standards to support textile circularity, demonstrated by their recently debuted NIR-SORT database, a tool that uses near-infrared spectroscopy to identify the molecular fingerprints of various fabrics, including blends.

Textile-to-textile recycling presents us with a unique opportunity to redefine the lifecycle of textiles and reduce the environmental impact of the fashion industry. We have a lot to look forward to as this new sector develops and evolves.

Marisa Adler is a senior consultant at Resource Recycling Systems and a leader in textile circularity consulting, advising public and private sector clients on sustainable textile management, policy and circular economy strategies.

This article appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of Plastics Recycling Update. Subscribe today for access to all print content.

A few generations ago, the fate of end-of-life clothing would have been an unlikely subject in a plastics recycling trade journal.

In 1960, natural fibers dominated global production, with cotton making up half of all textile fibers produced that year, according to data from textile analysis firm The Fiber Year, with other natural or cellulose-based fibers like linen, rayon and wool rounding out the mix. Synthetic fibers made up just 3% of global textile fiber produced that year.

The percentages have flipped dramatically since then. In 2023, synthetic materials including polyester, which is made from PET, and polyamide — nylon — made up a whopping 68% of global textile fiber production, while cotton had fallen to 21%.

Besides the material shift, the sheer growth of clothing production is staggering: Global textile manufacturing increased nearly sevenfold from an estimated 20 million metric tons annually in 1960 to 130 million metric tons in 2023.

With the increases come a host of new considerations. End-of-life textile management is far from a new concept, spanning a long history of secondhand clothing use, repurposing and mechanical recycling. And even in the synthetic space, recycled polyester clothing has been produced — typically using mechanically recycled PET bottles — for decades. Its share of overall polyester fabric grew from 4% in 2010 to 14% in 2020, according to the nonprofit Textile Exchange, which publishes annual textile data.

But the growth in new polyester production is eclipsing the increase in mechanically recycled polyester use: After recycled polyester production’s share of overall polyester use peaked at close to 15% in 2021, it fell back to 12.5% in 2023.

Amid these challenges and others, chemical recycling, the group of technologies that process a plastic down to its basic components, has emerged as what industry stakeholders say is a promising tool to cut down on one of the fastest-growing waste streams in the world. Chemically processing textiles is a recycling sector in its infancy, but many in the field are optimistic it can complement mechanical recycling and reuse models.

“Given the complications associated with mechanical recycling of textiles, alternative recycling technologies, such as chemical recycling, are promising thanks to their capacity to recycle blended textile waste,” the Textile Exchange wrote in a 2024 report. “They are designed to handle colorants, additives, and finishing materials, and are also able to produce recycled textile fibers with performance capabilities substantially equivalent to virgin polyester fibers.”

A long textile management history

Long before the current push for advanced processing methods, consumers have frequently followed the materials management hierarchy, which prioritizes reuse and repurposing above recycling, when faced with textile waste management.

“First they would wear, wear, wear, until it literally couldn’t be worn anymore,” said Marisa Adler, a senior consultant at Resource Recycling Systems and founder of the firm’s Textile Circularity Practice. “Then they would rip it up and just use it as cleaning rags in their home. And then they would finally throw it away.”

Collecting rags from households for reuse, repurposing or recycling has been an occupation for centuries, with the Textile Recycling Association, a U.K.-based industry group, tracing the history of rag collectors at least back to the Roman Empire.

It was an early profession in the U.S. as well, Adler explained, and has long helped to offset the need for virgin materials and paper to go into rag production.

“They were raggers: They’d go around and they would collect everyone’s old rags, and they would cut it up and sell it as a wiping material,” she said. “And that industry has evolved over time, and it’s still a very active and important industry.”

Mechanical recycling, which RRS defines as the physical form of recycling textiles in which fiber is cut, shredded, garnetted (pulled apart), melted or extruded for new manufacturing, also has a long global history.

The Italian city of Prato is renowned for generations of wool recycling expertise. The process involves pulling apart used wool clothing and re-spinning the wool back into a usable yarn. It uses textiles as feedstock and produces yarn for new textiles at the end. There are similar processes for cotton as well.

Another global textile recycling hub is Panipat, India, which is known for what’s called “shoddy” recycling, a mechanical process by which textiles are shredded, pulped and remanufactured into blankets, insulation and other types of stuffing and padding. That’s distinct from thread-to-thread processes in part because of the technical constraints of re-spinning yarn.

“There is just a maximum number of cycles you can go through, because the natural cellulosic fibers become shorter and shorter and they’re harder to spin, so it’s lower quality,” Adler said. “So you need a really good, pure, high, high-quality input in order to do a mechanical yarn-to-yarn recycling process, which is why it is not more common now.”

With cotton, for example, the recycled yarn often produces a lower quality output, and so it usually has to be spun with virgin cotton to make a usable yarn out the back end, Adler said.
“It has that high-quality input requirement,” she added. “Not a lot of textiles meet that, especially today.”

Mechanical polyester recycling challenges

Mechanical recycling is more complicated for synthetic and blended fabrics. As the Textile Exchange noted in a report last year, “mechanical recycling requires clean textile inputs free from contaminants, and it is difficult to process textiles containing more than one material type.” Pulling apart and separating fabrics by their component material is costly and labor-intensive, the group added.

That’s partially why nearly all of the mechanically recycled polyester used in new textiles comes from PET bottles rather than textiles, and it’s also contributing to industry interest in chemical recycling.

“In recent years, the demand for recycled bottle feedstock from the packaging industry in the U.S. has surpassed that of the textile industry,” RRS and the organization Fashion for Good wrote in a 2024 report titled “Sorting for Circularity USA.” They added that the shift “can largely be attributed to legislation mandating minimum recycled content rates for packaging.”

Put simply, recycled PET bottles are a hot commodity for the packaging industry, and companies looking to source PET bottles for textiles have “faced challenges due to higher prices and increased competition for limited supply.”

Fast fashion’s role

Another ingredient in the mix is the rise of fast fashion, which business analysis firm McKinsey defined as a portion of the clothing sector focused on “ultralow prices and condensed production cycles,” aiming to deliver “new styles to customers at a record pace.”

A recent briefing from the U.S. Government Accountability Office to lawmakers last year was blunt: “First introduced around 2000, the fast fashion business model produces textiles at lower cost and quality, and decreased durability. Under this model, trends change frequently, consumers buy textiles many times per year, and they dispose of textiles after using them for a short period of time.”

In the fast fashion industry and its recent ultra-fast fashion successor, the percentage of plastic feedstock is often higher than global textile averages. For instance, Singapore-headquartered fast fashion giant Shein in 2023 reported using polyester for over 75% of the company’s fiber feedstock, with the remainder consisting of cotton, viscose, spandex, polyamide and other materials. The company is frequently cited as the largest operating in the fast fashion space.

The Textile Exchange, in a comprehensive report on synthetic textile recycling issued last year, cautioned that short of a dramatic reduction in production and consumer buying trends, moving away from polyester would be virtually impossible.

“We must also be aware of the potential unintended consequences associated with solely relying on natural fibers for apparel and textiles,” the group wrote. “At current production rates, simply shifting from one material category to another would likely lead to the accelerated depletion of natural ecosystems.”

Additionally, during a talk at Goodwill’s first-ever Sustainability Summit last year, the CEO of emerging textile recycling firm Reju noted the material’s water resistance, light weight, machine washability and durability mean abandoning it is impossible.

“We can’t live without it, unfortunately, for the foreseeable future,” Patrik Frisk said at the event. “It’s an amazing product that we need to understand how to live with in a much smarter way.”

Increasingly, the road to that “smarter way” is paved with chemical recycling.

Chemical recycling takes several routes

In general, chemical recycling refers to a “depolymerization” process that uses one of several technologies to chemically disassemble polymer plastics into their monomer components. Those monomers can then be used to produce new resin.

Chemical recycling encompasses many technical processes. Glycolysis, for example, is the most commonly used for polyester, according to the Textile Exchange, and involves combining the polyester material with the chemical reactant glycol at high temperatures, to produce BHET, which stands for bis (hydroxyethylene) terephthalate.

Glycolysis and other depolymerization technologies can be used to produce what proponents describe as virgin-like output resins. They do have some limitations, the Sorting for Circularity USA report noted last year, including high energy use and requirements for 90% or greater purity from the given input fiber.

One highly-watched entrant to the textile chemical recycling space is Reju, an emerging German-headquartered company that says it is “unlocking the infinite possibilities of textile waste.” The company has described its process as using a textile-to-textile “regeneration” technology.

Reju was not available for an interview by press time, but the company was recently
featured by Sourcing Journal, which confirmed it is using a glycolysis process to produce BHET. The journal reported that, “heated up to temperatures of up to 250 degrees Celsius (482 degrees Fahrenheit), ethylene glycol and an unnamed volatile catalyst ‘decompose’ the polyester into its constituent monomers, creating a BHET slurry that can be filtered and purified of dyestuffs and other contaminants before it’s cooled, crystallized and dried back into solid form.”

The company opened a demonstration plant in Germany last fall and this year formed a supply partnership with a French consortium of textile companies to source post-consumer materials. Reju is also collaborating with Goodwill and WM in the U.S., announcing last fall that the group is planning “to develop a collaborative model for regional textile collection, sortation, reuse and recycling that is intended to divert more nonwearable textile materials from the waste stream.”

Collection infrastructure lacking

In 2018, the U.S. generated an estimated 17 million tons of end-of-life textiles, close to 6% of the entire municipal solid waste stream. Of that amount, 2.5 million tons were recycled, a 14.7% recycling rate. That puts textiles significantly behind common streams like paper and paperboard (68%), PET and HDPE bottles and jars (29% each) and glass (31%).

Of course, the latter materials have the substantial benefit of common curbside collection and, depending on the U.S. state, deposit return systems.

Pilot projects like the planned collaboration from Goodwill, Reju and WM could help establish a similar collection system for textiles. Reju hinted at ambitious U.S. plans in announcing it, saying the company anticipates developing a textile chemical recycling plant that would be fed by materials collected by Goodwill and WM.

Emerging regulations could also help improve collection infrastructure. California lawmakers in 2024 passed the nation’s first extended producer responsibility law covering textiles. The Responsible Textile Recovery Act took effect Jan. 1, kicking off a rulemaking process that will see textile manufacturers begin funding and facilitating recycling of their products in California within the next five years.

Although it’s the first U.S. effort, it comes after well-established EPR policies elsewhere in the world, including in France, where the regulation launched in 2007. Collection options grew substantially in France afterward, according to a 2018 overview published by the International Solid Waste Association, with hundreds of organizations providing on-street container, door-to-door services and textile banks at private businesses.

Public consciousness aroused

It’s difficult to identify an inflection point in the moment, when an emerging industry like the modern textile recycling sector explodes into a thriving and sustaining business. The introduction of chemical recycling will certainly bring skepticism, as it has drawn elsewhere in the plastics recycling space, and chemical recycling has yet to scale up fully in the plastics recycling industry, despite significant momentum in recent years.

But emerging legislation, the smattering of startup companies entering the space, the backing of some major producers and the frequent mainstream media coverage of clothing’s environmental impacts suggest end-of-life textile management is an issue that’s in the public consciousness in a new way.

“I think the other reason it’s become a prominent topic of conversation is just because it’s a product that touches everybody’s lives,” said Adler, who has been focused in the textile recycling space for over eight years. “It has such deep, emotional ties — you know, we express ourselves through fashion.”

Infobox: Textile chemical recycling developments

A variety of clothing companies and other organizations are getting in on chemical recycling.

• Patagonia: Long a user of mechanically recycled polyester, clothing giant Patagonia has been experimenting with chemical recycling technologies of late, including with Japanese firm Jeplan, which commercialized a glycolysis process to handle PET and post-consumer polyester textiles. For the fall 2024 line of Patagonia’s “Better Sweater” collection, the company reported using 48,000 pounds of Jeplan’s post-industrial chemically recycled polyester.
• H&M: Fast-fashion giant H&M in 2024 announced the launch of its joint-venture Syre, which “aims to rapidly scale textile-to-textile recycling of polyester and contribute to a more sustainable textile industry.” In October 2024, Syre announced it is establishing a textile chemical recycling plant in collaboration with polyester producer Selenis, in Cedar Creek, North Carolina, with plans to be operational in mid-2025 and produce 10,000 metric tons per year of chemically recycled polyester.
• University of Delaware: The university’s Center for Plastics Innovation studied a method of modified glycolysis that is faster and better suited for mixed textiles than traditional chemical recycling processes. In a July 2024 report published in Scientific Advances, the team described a “microwave-assisted” glycolysis that produced rapid delpolymerization of polyester and spandex into their monomers in just 15 minutes while also leaving intact any cotton and nylon that was in the textiles.
• Shein: The global direct-to-consumer clothing giant in January announced it has developed a chemical recycling technology to process polyester that can use both post-consumer and post-industrial polyester and both end-of-life textiles and other sources like PET bottles. The company plans to start up a facility in June to produce 6.6 million pounds of chemically recycled polyester per year, with assistance from a group of selected fiber manufacturers. The site hasn’t been announced.
• Eastman: Chemical recycling projects outside the textile space are also targeting PET packaging that is less frequently mechanically recycled, and the resulting resin could go into new textiles, RRS noted in the Collecting for Circularity USA report. Chemical giant Eastman is one example; the company in 2024 began sourcing PET thermoforms from curbside recycling programs and processing them at a methanolysis plant in Tennessee. Eastman has also processed post-consumer textiles on a pilot basis there.

This article appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of Plastics Recycling Update. Subscribe today for access to all print content.

Chemical recycling, the umbrella term for a wide array of processes that break down the molecular chains of plastic polymers, has been a contentious topic for years, drawing debate over its role, how to regulate it and where it fits into the larger picture of resource circularity.

But even stakeholders on opposite sides of the debate found common ground in recent interviews, sharing concerns that the technology has been overpromised on one hand as well as ideas for how it can complement, rather than replace, conventional mechanical recycling on the other.

“We now have routinely seen facilities operating at reduced capacity, delays getting online, things like that,” said Anja Brandon, director of plastics policy at the Ocean Conservancy, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that doesn’t support chemical recycling. Brandon cited the April 2024 closure of Agylix’s joint PS recycling venture, Regenyx, in Oregon, among other facility closures and disruptions, as evidence that the technologies aren’t the “get-out-of-jail-free card they were promised to be.”

“I think the false promises that were made of ‘we can accept all of your plastics, and it’s really cost-efficient, and you’ll get plastics back immediately’ — folks are starting to see through those lies, and because of that, some of the smart chemical recycling companies are now changing their language,” Brandon said. Now she’s hearing chemical recycling advertised as “just a part of the puzzle.”

Brian Bauer, CEO of California-based chemical recycling company Resynergi, agreed that early claims that pyrolysis could handle anything weren’t helpful. The company uses microwave energy to break down HDPE, LDPE, PP and PS and announced in February that it had raised $18 million toward commissioning its first commercial-scale chemical recycling plant.

“Some players said, ‘We can take everything,’ and it’s like — come on, guys,” Bauer said, adding that the industry needs to show people that chemical recycling works.

“Otherwise they’re feeling lied to,” he said. “We’re not making the claim we’re going to do all plastic for everyone. We’re doing our part.”

Brandon and others also agreed that chemical recycling could play a beneficial role in managing end-of-life plastics, though Brandon said that role is limited and even shrinking, while industry players took a much more ambitious view.

“A robust chemical recycling industry is essential to achieve significantly greater recycling rate targets, such as the Environmental Protection Agency’s 50% by 2030 National Recycling Goal,” Ross Eisenberg, president of American Chemistry Council’s plastics division, wrote in an email. “While mechanical recycling should be prioritized for the plastics it is suited to recycle, chemical recycling is needed for the many types of plastics that can’t enter the mechanical recycling stream.”

Ins and outs of chemical recycling

Chemical recycling includes processes that use heat, pressure and solvents to break polymers into liquids or gasses that can then be processed into fuels, oils, waxes, new plastics or other chemical products. It’s also commonly referred to as advanced recycling, non-mechanical recycling and molecular recycling.

Whatever the term, it’s typically used to describe three main technologies: purification, depolymerization and conversion.

Purification covers technologies that use solvents to dissolve plastic and separate it out from additives. The plastic can be recovered without changing the basic molecular structure, but the process requires highly pure feed stocks and can only be used for certain types of plastic. It’s a newer technology that isn’t yet available at scale.

Depolymerization is a broad category that uses solvents, heat, catalysts or a combination thereof. It also requires pure feed stocks and is also limited to very specific types of plastics called condensation polymers, such as nylon and PET. Methanolysis, which utilizes methanol, is one of the most common types, but the technology is also newer. Enzymatic depolymerization, which uses bacteria, fungi or other microorganisms, has also been studied but is not at scale.

Conversion technology in general has been around for decades for turning plastic into fuel. Two types of technologies are widespread today: pyrolysis and gasification. Pyrolysis uses high heat and pressure to break apart chemical bonds in plastic to create what’s called pyrolysis oil, which can be used as fuel, to create new plastic and in other applications. Gasification uses heat and pressure to break chemical bonds to produce mainly synthetic natural gas.

A 2023 Closed Loop Partners study evaluated several technological processes in terms of environmental impacts and financial viability of several types of chemical recycling technologies. In terms of total packaging volumes accepted across the United States and Canada, the study found that conversion techniques could accept 82% of all plastic packaging produced — more than mechanical, purification or depolymerization technologies could alone.

However, the researchers noted that when looking at the amount of PCR each category can yield, conversion technologies “have the longest route back to becoming plastic.” They estimated that purification would yield the highest volume of PCR, while conversion yielded the lowest amount, about half as much.

Typical yields of usable, specifically plastic material from conversion technologies range from 0.1-5.7% for pyrolysis to 2-14% for gasification, according to the Ocean Conservancy, because many of the end products have non-plastic uses. Typical yields of mechanical recycling, meanwhile, range from 73-84%.

Through an environmental lens, purification and depolymerization technologies had smaller environmental footprints on average, the report found, taking into account energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and water impacts.

A lifecycle analysis from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory and supported by the American Chemistry Council suggested that chemically recycling plastics entails lower greenhouse gas emissions than virgin production but didn’t compare it to mechanical recycling.

Another study conducted by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory did make that comparison and found mechanical recycling and glycolysis, a type of depolymerization, outperformed all other technologies in a variety of metrics.

A growing industry

Many chemical recycling companies have started up over the past five years, with some taking hold and others folding. Companies like Cyclyx, Brightmark and PureCycle have built or are in the process of building more than 1 billion pounds of processing capacity in the U.S. and other countries. There are also some oil heavyweights in the ring, such as ExxonMobil, and chemical companies such as Eastman.

Eastman, for example, started a chemical recycling facility in Kingsport, Tennessee, in late 2023 and is now close to running at 100% capacity. The plant uses methanolysis to process scrap PET into resin, branded as Tritan Renew. It includes food-grade PET resin with up to 75% recycled dimethyl terephthalate, or DMT, one of the chemicals produced by the methanolysis process.

The feedstock is largely opaque and colored packaging, which comes from sources including a supply agreement with Midwest recycling operator Rumpke. In 2024, the company announced plans to build a second facility in Longview, Texas, and the U.S. Department of Energy granted the project up to $375 million. It also has plans for a facility in France. Eastman uses two different technologies: carbon renewal technology, which employs a form of gasification, and polyester renewal with methanolysis.

ExxonMobil has been building a large chemical recycling footprint based on its pyrolysis technology as well. In November, it announced 350 million additional pounds of capacity in Texas, slated to come online in 2026. That’s in addition to a 150-million-pound unit that started up in December 2022 and a second unit announced in May at the large Baytown site in Texas, expected to start up in 2025.

That puts the company’s total U.S. plastic processing capacity at 500 million pounds per year by 2026, spread over a total of six units. The Baytown site is currently the only operational chemical recycling plant, and it has processed more than 70 million pounds of plastic scrap.

ExxonMobil is also developing chemical recycling projects elsewhere in North America, and in Europe and Asia, with a goal of 1 billion pounds of annual recycling capacity globally by 2027.

Joshua Dill, a plastics recycling analyst at ICIS, said one marker of success for chemical recycling is “the fact that it’s still alive, especially now, considering interest rates are staying at relatively elevated levels.

“Chemical recycling investment is quite high, especially relative to mechanical,” he said. “That initial capex is quite substantial.”

And while more than 70% of announced plants have not yet made a final investment decision, Dill noted that projects are still being announced and garnering investment.

A mixed reception

California’s attorney general last fall filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil, alleging its claims about plastic recyclability have been misleading and deceitful. The company responded with its own lawsuit for defamation in January.

The dispute encapsulates a larger back-and-forth over the nature of chemical recycling that’s playing out across the U.S. and beyond.

The states have differed over whether chemical recycling facilities should be considered recycling or waste disposal, which brings tighter environmental regulations, or be treated as manufacturing, which enjoys looser rules. More than half have passed bills taking the more lenient route.

“Policymakers all across the country – in their communities and in their states – want to see greater amounts and more types of plastics recycled,” Craig Cookson, then senior director of plastics sustainability at the American Chemistry Council, said in 2023.

Other states, such as Maine, have passed laws clarifying that chemical recycling should be regulated as waste management, even if materials handled by the process don’t count toward state recycling goals. Oregon allows for the possibility of chemical recycling technology but places preference on mechanical recycling over both landfill and chemical recycling. The state’s packaging EPR law states that all material has to be responsibly managed by a facility that is transparent and environmentally sound.

Some organizations also make a distinction between plastic-to-plastic chemical recycling and plastic-to-fuel. The Recycled Materials Association, for example, supports processes that convert used plastic into resins and monomers but doesn’t support turning it into petrochemical products for energy.

In addition, “ReMA does not support the label of ‘advanced recycling’ for non-mech-
anical recycling, as doing so creates a totally inappropriate and untruthful distinction between mechanical and non-mechanical recycling processes,” according to the group’s position statement.

At the federal level, a bipartisan bill that would, among other things, set a minimum post-consumer content rate for plastics and explicitly include chemical recycling has drawn support from the plastics industry. Eisenberg with ACC said it could position the U.S. as “the world leader in plastic manufacturing and recycling.”

“Chemical recycling facilities require significant capital expenditure to build, often hundreds of millions of dollars,” he said. “For companies to make such a large investment, they need both regulatory and market certainty that their investments will be economically viable long term.”

On the global stage, Brandon said the world has continued to deadlock on the topic in discussions on international agreements, often simply leaving the question unresolved.
For example, during the 2023 Basel Convention meetings, she remembers working on the technical guidance of environmentally sound management of plastic. Chemical recycling ended up being included in brackets in the technical guidelines and appendix, which she called “international legal code for ‘we don’t know, and we can’t agree.'”

Brandon said she thinks more transparency would be helpful — as would using more specific terms for the very different technologies and outcomes that fall under the umbrella of chemical recycling.

“Painting things with a broad brushstroke really does a disservice to decision makers who are really trying to grapple with implementation or passing laws,” she said.

An EPR niche?

Bauer said Resynergi recently finished a two-year pilot, has shipped its first containers of oil to several customers and is building its first commercial-scale site, in California, with plans to expand to several more sites in the area later.

He’s focused on California due to the extended producer responsibility legislation there, he said.

“I really think we fit the spirit of SB 54 so, so well,” he said, because the EPR law talks about reducing carbon footprints and being “safe and friendly to local communities.”

“Any site will bring 30 jobs and a very small footprint. Our emissions are equivalent to approximately a semitruck driving down the road,” he said. “Our VOCs are like a passenger car when we are doing 20 tons per day. Other approaches are doing 200 tons per day, but we’re decentralized and co-located with smaller MRFs.”

Bauer added that SB 54 also calls out the need to avoid creating hazardous waste, and in his view, “with pyrolysis, when you do it well and right, everything is a product. There’s essentially zero waste, no hazardous waste.”

Alterra, a chemical recycling company with a plant in Akron, Ohio, that has been operating since 2013, also highlighted how chemical recycling could support EPR by bringing less commonly recycled materials, such as multi-layer packaging and contaminated plastics, into the system.

“One of the greatest strengths of chemical recycling lies in its diversity. No single technology can process all types of discarded plastics, but collectively, chemical recycling solutions can address a wide range of materials that would otherwise go to landfill or incineration,” the company said in a written statement.

“Ultimately, EPR will only be successful if robust end markets exist for recycled materials. Chemical recycling unlocks endless end-market demand by supplying high-quality recycled feedstocks to industries that require strict material performance, such as packaging, automotive, and consumer goods.”

On the other hand, Brandon with the Ocean Conservancy argued that, as comprehensive management policies such as EPR emerge, “the part of the problem they could solve for is shrinking.” She pointed to the need for high-quality bales in particular.

“At the point at which you get a grade A bale, you can send it to mechanical recycling,” she said. “It kind of poses the question: What problems are we truly solving with this kind of technology, especially in the context of packaging, where mechanical recycling is one of the most cost efficient and sustainable solutions?”

Brandon noted that it could be beneficial to shift the focus of the chemical recycling conversation — for example, even though most of the conversation in the U.S. is about packaging, which is nearly 40% of the plastics used globally and a high contributor to marine pollution, “there are other plastics out there that we’re not talking about that will be really challenging to mechanical recycling.

“If we can focus on purification technology, truly recovering those plastics in other sectors, not generating hazardous waste and not harming communities, there could be a pathway there,” she said. “These technologies are not the right technologies for packaging conversations.”
What she doesn’t want to see is a “feed-the-beast” situation where big, expensive facilities are built and then create pressure to keep producing plastics for feedstock.

Looking to the future

ICIS doesn’t offer a formal chemical recycling forecast, but it does take a cumulative look based on plant and capacity announcements, Dill said. He predicted that chemical recycling will see growth around 10 times that of the current capacity.

“How I always frame this is that you could think about that like a theoretical maximum,” he said. “So we’re likely not going to break above that, but we’re likely not going to realize all of that. It should be a percentage of that.”

That growth level “shows that some things are going right,” he said. “There’s this confidence because these players are announcing these things.”

There’s also a 60-40 split between pre-commercial pilot facilities and commercial level facilities, he said, which is normal at this stage: “In the future, those numbers will likely reverse.”

However, there are certainly hurdles, Dill said, and a big one is feedstock. There used to be “this idea that chemical recyclers could handle anything at all — whatever dirty bales come, we just put it into whatever reactor and get a product on the other end.” But as pilot plants started scaling up, operators realized some level of pre-processing is necessary, and making that kind of change to an already established model can be difficult.

A second challenge is scaling up, Dill said, as it’s a more complicated process than just making the pilot equipment larger. The current macroeconomic situation is also a barrier.

Bauer noted that Resynergi chose to stay fairly small for several of those reasons.

“We’ve proven in our pilots this particular reactor size with this particular technology, and we’re just going to repeat that over and over again,” he said. Compact size also allows Resynergi’s technology to be co-located with existing MRFs, Bauer said, “going to where the plastic is already collected for you.”

Resynergi will have several sites up and running soon, along with some big partnership announcements, Bauer added.

“It’s going to take time — it’s the chicken and the egg — for players like us to show that it really truly can be done in volume at all locations and for people to collect more and more,” he said. “They grow on each other. Maybe it’s a 20-year thing, but I sure hope it’s a five-year thing.”

This article appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of Plastics Recycling Update. Subscribe today for access to all print content.

In the three decades since its first printing, the Association of Plastic Recyclers Design Guide, an instruction manual for calibrating plastic packaging to best suit reclaimers’ needs, has evolved from a basic list of dos and don’ts, patched together by a handful of PET companies, to an internationally cited online litmus test of PET, HDPE, PE and PP recyclability.

APR, the owner of this magazine’s publisher, is marking the guide’s 30th anniversary at the 2025 Plastics Recycling Conference later this month. The inaugural APR Recycling Leadership Awards will recognize packaging designers, manufacturers, researchers and innovators who have made significant contributions to the guide’s mission.

The recognition caps off years of both tinkering and overhauling, said APR Chief Operating Officer Curt Cozart, who has led those efforts for about a decade with continuous guidance from APR’s many technical committees of industry scientists and other experts.

One of the overarching goals when Cozart began was to make the guide simple and consistent. For example, earlier guide versions used a group of seemingly synonymous descriptions, such as “to be avoided” and “detrimental,” for certain shapes, resin characteristics and other design features of a bottle or jug.

“But it didn’t relate all the words to each other — was ‘to be avoided’ worse or better than ‘detrimental’?” Cozart said. He and his staff therefore condensed and formalized the guide into a few distinct categories: “APR preferred” for best practices, “non-recyclable” for unacceptable ones and “detrimental” for in-between characteristics that wouldn’t necessarily get a package thrown out but did make it more difficult to recycle.

“We tried to move it to where people wouldn’t feel comfortable sitting in that category,” Cozart said, and indeed, several packaging manufacturers seeking the recyclability green light have complained to him about a detrimental rating. “It’s doing exactly what it’s intended to do.”
The APR team also worked to expand the guide’s scope to account for the capabilities of materials recovery facilities, covering every step of the recycling process from sorting to remanufacture.

The guide’s latest online version, unveiled last fall, allows users to search among several varieties of PET, HDPE, PE and PP and hone in on aspects of a package that range from the mundane, such as color and labeling, to the technical, including resin melt flows and densities. It then provides acceptable baselines for each as well as testing protocols and referrals to testing laboratories.

Taken together, the guide gives a packaging maker the tools to either tweak an existing product or craft an ideal one from the ground up.

“We’ve really come a long way from this kind of paper encyclopedia thing,” Cozart said.
Take Kraft Heinz, which sits on APR’s PET technical committee. With APR’s guidance, the company stopped making the valves in the center of its ketchup bottle lids out of silicone, which was labeled detrimental because of its density, said Chris Max, the company’s sustainable innovation packaging lead.

“We transitioned with our partner to a TPE (thermoplastic elastomer) alternative — it still functions the same, but it now floats and it is compatible with the olefin recycling stream,” Max said.

One of the design guide’s biggest benefits is time-specific documentation of recyclability, he added, which is a major concern in the world of consumer packaged goods in an era of lawsuits over companies’ recycling claims.

“It’s definitely moving in the right direction; it’s easier to find things,” Max said of the guide’s latest interface, though he’d also like to see a smartphone app version someday.

The design guide’s also helpful for nudging customers in a more recycling-friendly direction, said Tim Bohlke, director of sustainability at Resource Label Group, a maker of package labels and wraps. The biggest brands are largely familiar with recyclability requirements, he said, but “there’s thousands of other customers out there that we need to educate.

“Here’s really the gold standard of products that you want to choose from,” he said of the design guide. And his customers have responded positively, moving closer to APR guidelines for items like Paul Mitchell’s line of hair products. “They care because they know their customers care, they know their retailers care.”

Along the same lines, the guide has taken on a life of its own as a third-party tool for assessment and compliance, Cozart said. California’s SB 343, which put limits on the usage of the chasing-arrows and other labeling for recyclability, explicitly references the guide, for instance. RecyClass, a European nonprofit advancing recyclability across the continent, has also worked to align its own guidelines with APR’s.

And that increased reach comes with a little more pressure — “both a good thing and a bad thing,” Cozart quipped. So the tinkering and improving continue. Improvements in the works include translating the guide into more languages and providing users with more detail when testing results in a failure.

“There is no ‘done.’ It is a living document,” said Cozart. “Who knows where it’s going to go?”

This article appeared in the Spring 2025 issue of Plastics Recycling Update. Subscribe today for access to all print content.

2025 is a pivotal year for plastics recycling, where progress, promises and policies are set to collide. As companies reevaluate their long-standing commitments, policymakers push for new regulations and misinformation clouds public perception, recyclers must navigate a landscape filled with both challenges and opportunities. The question isn’t whether recycling works — it does — but whether the right choices will be made now to strengthen and expand it.

Here are five key trends that I believe will define plastics recycling in the year ahe

1. 30 Years of Smarter Design

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Association of Plastic Recyclers Design Guide for Plastics Recyclability, a milestone that underscores how critical design is to the success of plastics recycling (Editor’s note: See “The Design Guide Turns 30,” page 24). Since its introduction, the APR Design Guide has become the globally recognized standard for designing packaging that can be effectively recycled. It provides detailed, practical guidance for packaging designers and engineers to ensure their products are compatible with recycling systems and do not become contaminants.

Three decades ago, recyclability was often an afterthought in packaging design. A product’s appearance, marketing potential and shelf performance took precedence over its end-of-life recyclability. Today, however, more companies understand that designing for recyclability is essential to achieving their sustainability goals.

We’ve seen growing interest in our training programs, and we estimate that about 30% of plastics packaging today follows the APR Design Guide. That’s progress, but it’s not enough. Designing for recyclability is the first and most fundamental step in achieving a circular economy. If a package isn’t designed to be recyclable, it doesn’t matter how efficient our collection, sorting and processing systems are — it won’t get recycled.

In 2025, we expect to see more companies adopting the APR Design Guide as they work to meet their sustainability goals and comply with evolving regulatory requirements. We’ll also celebrate companies leading the way through our inaugural APR Recycling Leadership Awards, which will honor innovators who have demonstrated leadership to advance design for recyclability, developed new recycling technology, developed packaging to address recyclability challenges and increased their commitment to the utilization of post-consumer resin.

2. Too Much, Too Cheap

One of the most significant challenges we face in the plastics recycling industry is the oversupply of virgin plastic on a global scale. In recent years, petrochemical companies have significantly expanded their production capacity, saturating markets with low-cost virgin resin. This influx, coupled with imported material entering North America and Europe, has driven virgin resin prices to historically low levels.

This price pressure creates a major hurdle for recycled content. PCR often costs more to produce than virgin resin, largely due to the infrastructure, labor and processes involved in collecting, sorting and reprocessing materials. When virgin plastic is sold at extremely low prices, it disincentivizes companies from using recycled materials, regardless of their stated sustainability commitments.

Compounding this issue is the need for reliable, high-quality PCR. This is where APR’s PCR Certification Program plugs in to ensure that recycled content is truly post-consumer and meets stringent quality standards. This program helps build trust in PCR markets, giving companies the confidence to invest in sustainable sourcing despite fluctuating virgin resin prices.

In 2025, the industry must work toward decoupling PCR pricing from virgin resin costs. Policy interventions like minimum recycled content requirements and tax incentives can help level the playing field, ensuring that PCR materials remain viable even when virgin resin prices drop. Global oversupply of virgin plastic isn’t going away overnight, but smart policy decisions combined with programs like APR’s PCR Certification can mitigate its impact.

3. Fallout for Walking Back Commitments

The year 2025 has long been a key target for corporate sustainability commitments, particularly regarding the use of PCR content. Over the past decade, dozens of brands have publicly pledged to increase recycled content in their packaging, with many aiming to meet specific goals by 2025. However, as the deadline looms, we’re seeing some companies retreat from those promises.

These pullbacks create ripple effects across the recycling value chain. Recyclers have invested in infrastructure to meet the anticipated demand for recycled plastics. When companies reduce or delay their commitments, that infrastructure becomes underutilized, which jeopardizes future investments and stalls the development of circular systems.

Customers consistently express a preference for recyclable packaging and expect brands to follow through on their environmental commitments. Additionally, using PCR helps companies reduce their carbon footprint and meet corporate social responsibility goals. So why are companies backing away? The answer often boils down to cost. As described earlier, recycled material carries a price premium compared to virgin resin. For recycling to succeed, that premium must be viewed not as an unnecessary expense but as an investment in sustainability.

In 2025, brands must recognize that inconsistent demand weakens the entire system. Long-term contracts for PCR content can provide recyclers with the market stability they need to continue expanding capacity. Without this commitment, the industry risks stagnating just when it needs to grow.

4. The Misinformation Battle

There is no question that misinformation and disinformation about plastics recycling have grown into major obstacles. In recent years, we’ve witnessed a concerted effort to undermine public confidence in recycling, often driven by groups advocating for the complete elimination of plastics. Ironically, these attacks target one activity — recycling — that demonstrably reduces the need for virgin plastic production and mitigates environmental harm.

The impact of this misinformation is evident in public opinion data. Just five years ago, around 15% of consumers questioned whether their recyclables were truly recycled. Today, that figure has more than doubled. This growing doubt has tangible consequences: When consumers lose confidence in recycling, they don’t stop buying plastic, they just stop putting it in the recycling bin.

The facts tell a different story. Plastics recycling in the U.S. diverts more than 5 billion pounds of material annually, delivering significant environmental benefits like reduced greenhouse gas emissions and energy savings. We also have the capacity to double that volume if more material is properly collected and sorted.

In 2025, APR will continue to push back against misinformation. We are committed to providing accurate, science-based information to policymakers, industry leaders and community programs. Restoring trust in recycling is essential if we want to build a truly circular economy for plastics.

5. States Take the Lead

In recent history, activity on recycling at the federal level has been limited. But states are filling the void to address plastics recycling challenges. Extended producer responsibility programs that shift financial burdens to producers are gaining momentum across the U.S. This structure provides a direct incentive for companies to design more recyclable packaging and invest in recycling systems.

However, not all EPR programs are created equal. Many initial frameworks focus heavily on the supply side — improving collection and processing systems — but overlook the equally critical demand side. Without mechanisms like minimum recycled content requirements, EPR efforts may fall short of their intentions.

APR has long supported policies that foster both supply and demand growth. In 2025, we anticipate more states adopting EPR legislation, particularly as early adopters like California, Colorado and Maine demonstrate tangible results. Our role will be to help shape these programs to ensure they create meaningful, long-term market signals for recycled content.

Looking Ahead: A Year of Opportunity

Plastics recycling is not just at a crossroads — it is on the brink of transformation. In 2025, we have the opportunity to drive real change by mobilizing smarter design, inspiring corporate leadership and building public trust. The challenges ahead are real, but so is the momentum we’ve built.

At APR, we are leading the charge. For 30 years, our APR Design Guide has set the standard for packaging innovation. Our PCR certification program ensures integrity in recycled content, and our advocacy efforts continue to push for policies that create real, lasting impact. We know what works, and we are committed to expanding solutions that make plastics recycling more effective, efficient and accessible.

A circular economy isn’t just possible — it’s within reach. Success will require industry collaboration, bold thinking and tireless effort. Together, I am confident that we can make 2025 a breakthrough year for plastics recycling.

Steve Alexander is president & CEO of the Association of Plastic Recyclers, which owns Resource Recycling, Inc.