Advanced recycling includes a variety of technologies that effectively transforms plastic waste into the raw materials used in the process of manufacturing new plastics and products and allows for the recycling of typically “hard to recycle” plastics like food packaging, synthetic grass, package foam, bubble wrap, and more.
To address a critical missing link in the plastic waste supply chain and help turn plastic waste into a valued resource, ACC member ExxonMobil Product Solutions and Agilyx formed the joint venture Cyclyx, with fellow ACC member LyondellBasell joining later. Cyclyx helps to fill this missing link by seeking to source, collect and pre-process large volumes of waste plastics to meet mechanical and advanced recycling specifications.
Cyclyx refers to its objective as its “10to90” mission, whereby Cyclyx aims to increase the recyclability of plastics from 10 percent to 90 percent by diverting plastic waste away from landfills in communities where Cyclyx operates. Consistent with this mission, Cyclyx has implemented landfill-diversion programs in collaboration with communities that collect all types of plastic waste, not just plastics typically collected by single-stream waste collections. Cyclyx has developed programs at collection sites and schools throughout the City of Houston, where more than 440,000 pounds of plastic waste have been collected to date.
Through this approach to plastic recycling, Cyclyx is building the infrastructure to sort, custom compound, and pre-process plastic waste into a feedstock that meets the technical specifications of recyclers like ExxonMobil and LyondellBasell. Together, these companies are investing $135 million into a first-of-its-kind Cyclyx Circularity Center (CCC), with a planned start-up date of mid-2025 in the Houston trade port. The center will leverage Cyclyx proprietary technologies to analyze plastics based on their composition and sort them according to customer specifications for their highest and best reuse.
The CCC will have the capacity to provide 300 million pounds of plastic feedstock per year, capable of feeding multiple mechanical and advanced recycling facilities such as those being developed by ExxonMobil and LyondellBasell.
Beyond its partnership with ExxonMobil and LyondellBasell, Cyclyx is engaging the plastic waste value chain through its Cyclyx Consortium, which fosters collaboration among industry leaders from various sectors and communities. The Consortium also includes ACC members Eastman, Braskem, SABIC, and TotalEnergies. To date, this collaboration has developed 10to90 take-back programs for residential, municipal, educational, commercial, and industrial applications focused on driving scalable solutions to divert more plastic waste from landfills.
Through its support of plastic recycling, Cyclyx is leveraging its understanding of the correlation between waste material composition analysis and the specification requirements of new advanced recycling technologies to get the right feedstock to the right technology—creating a new supply chain for waste plastic and diverting post-use plastic from landfill.
