Shell Walks Back Chemical Recycling Project

As 2025 sustainability goals loom across the plastics and packaging industries, Shell has quietly abandoned its plan to use chemical recycling to convert one million metric tons of plastic waste into pyrolysis oil.

In its 2023 sustainability report, Shell noted that lack of feedstock, slow development of technology, and regulatory uncertainty led the oil giant to conclude that the scale of its ambition to “turn one million tonnes of plastic waste a year into pyrolysis oil by 2025 is unfeasible.”

Pyrolysis upgrader units remain on track.

That said, Shell is proceeding with two pyrolysis upgrader units, in the Netherlands and Singapore, that are expected to process up to 50,000 tons of pyrolysis oil a year.

Pyrolysis oil is used as a feedstock that is recycled into new plastics, replacing fossil-fuel derived sources.

“In 2023, we signed several strategic co-operation agreements with partners to unlock access to plastic waste feedstock and enable long-term storage of pyrolysis oil,” Shell’s report noted. “Work on our new pyrolysis oil upgrader at the Shell Chemicals Park Moerdijk in the Netherlands continues. The plant . . . is expected to start production in 2024.”

Shell began using pyrolysis oil in its Norco, LA, chemical plant in 2019. In November of that year, the company began touting 2025 as its launching point to use one million tons of plastic waste in its global chemical plants annually.

Related:Updated: Encina Abandons Plans to Build $1.1 Billion Advanced Recycling Plant

Increasing circularity continues to be a goal.

“Our ambition, regardless of regulation, is to increase circularity and move away from a linear economy to one where products and materials are reused, repurposed, and recycled,” Shell spokesperson Curtis Smith told The Guardian in a July 17 report.

Experts question viability of chemical recycling.

The walk-back comes amid increasing concerns about the viability of chemical recycling — also called advanced recycling — particularly its environmental impact. A report by the Center for Climate Integrity, for instance, titled “The Fraud of Plastic Recycling,” noted instances of plastics industry experts questioning the energy-intensive process.

In a recent PlasticsToday column, “Chemical Recycling Just Isn’t Feasible,” John Spevacek echoed those concerns. “From an energy perspective, the whole idea of taking plastics, breaking them down into their components, and then making the same plastics from them is fundamentally unsound,” he wrote.

However, on a web page dedicated to chemical recycling, Shell noted in January that a collaboration with Braskem will “increase the amount of circular content used in Braskem’s production of polypropylene as part of a wider value chain enhancement.”