Advanced Recycling Is a Fraud—And the Big Oil Plastics Industry Knows It

At a chemical recycling conference last year, an industry consultant warned attendees that “[d]elays & setbacks ... open the door for an increasing number of reports & press articles expressing doubt & strong criticism about the industry’s claims.”

They were right.

Facing growing pressure to confront the plastic waste crisis, the plastics industry claims to have found a solution: "advanced recycling." But there is a huge divide between the plastics industry's public claims about the potential of advanced recycling to address the plastic waste crisis and the technical realities of chemical recycling processes.

All available information suggests advanced recycling won’t be able to address plastic pollution at a meaningful scale — and some of the most compelling evidence comes from people within the plastics industry. A new report I authored at the Center for Climate Integrity makes clear it’s not just environmental groups that are pointing out the limitations of this so-called new technology — it's the experts who know the industry best, including chemical engineers, consultants, trade organizations, and plastics producers themselves, who consistently undermine the industry's claims.

“The Fraud of Advanced Recycling” shows how the industry makes five key claims — all of which mislead the public.

It’s not just environmental groups that are pointing out the limitations of this so-called new technology — it's the experts who know the industry best...

First, the plastics industry presents advanced recycling as new and groundbreaking — like when Exxon CEO Darren Woods called it a "brand new technology" in 2022. It’s not new. The plastics industry has been trying to scale up chemical recycling to address plastic waste for more than 50 years to no avail. According to California’s plastic recycling deception lawsuit against ExxonMobil, virtually the same process Exxon is using today was patented by Mobil all the way back in 1978, and efforts in the decades since have faced predictable problems.

What is new is the name. The industry only started using "advanced recycling" in the last 10 years, marketing it as an amalgamation of every imaginable benefit of every distinct chemical recycling process with none of their respective downsides.

Second, the plastics industry claims that advanced recycling is scaling up to address the plastic waste crisis, even though experts point out that the same economic and technical limitations that have plagued chemical recycling for decades still hold true. Major plastics producers have made advanced recycling commitments, but none of them have a practical pathway to meeting them. Exxon has said that it will process 1 billion pounds annually by the end of 2026, but has processed a tiny fraction of that so far.

Experts have warned that there is not a viable pathway to scaling up for years. In 2017, consulting firm Accenture and the European Chemical Industry Council noted that “the ability to perform the process at industrial scale is still a technological challenge — and currently not economically feasible.” Just last year, the Association of Plastic Recyclers said that "much of the information promoting chemical recycling technologies overlooks the necessary design, collection, sortation, and end markets that need to be in place for any type of recycling to scale.”

As one expert consultant summarized, “we’ve had a few successes and a ton of failures; capacity has not developed as major projects have been delayed or cancelled.” These failures have left the industry with an “[u]rgent need for success stories,” in the words of another consultant.

The third key claim about advanced recycling is that it can address the problem of post-consumer mixed plastic waste that mechanical recycling can't. Dow, for example, says that advanced recycling allows for “recycling the unrecyclable.” But the reality is that particular chemical recycling processes are only suitable for particular kinds of plastics and can't handle contamination, meaning advanced recycling is subject to many of the same constraints that have limited the effectiveness of mechanical recycling.

The Flexible Packaging Association explains that advanced recycling “requires plastic material that is of suitable quality, with low levels of contamination and at sufficient volume to meet demand. These are some of the same challenges facing the mechanical recycling infrastructure.” Or as the industry-funded Alliance to End Plastic Waste put it in 2022, "while advanced recycling should be viewed as a recycling outlet for a different range of materials, it should not be viewed as a recycling outlet for contaminated materials or unsorted materials.”

Fourth, the industry presents advanced recycling as environmentally friendly, despite the fact that these processes produce hazardous pollutants and are extremely energy-intensive, with a Duke research group noting that chemical recycling "poses significant threats of harm to already overburdened communities" and calling for "caution in evaluating the industry's claims." The industry has done little to assuage these concerns. As one consultant explained, “[c]oncerns about potential externalities remain largely unaddressed.”

The fifth claim is that advanced recycling enables a circular economy — Shell, for example, says that it's "working to close the loop: helping to transform the plastic value chain from linear to circular.” But advanced recycling processes don't keep plastic in the production cycle and don't limit the production of virgin plastic made from fossil fuels — key tenets of the concept of a circular economy.

The reality is that a very small percentage of the material that goes into the most commonly-used chemical recycling processes can come out on the other side as feedstocks for new plastics. One industry-affiliated group acknowledge that “[c]onversion processes typically have low yields, especially when discounting the portion of materials going to fuels."

In the end, though, circularity would be a threat to the petrochemical companies’ business of extracting more fossil fuels and making more plastics. As an investment firm with industry ties explained, any positive impacts associated with advanced recycling would require "shifting away from oil exploration and new extraction infrastructure," since it would only lead to benefits "when it displaces the use of virgin plastics."

California's lawsuit against ExxonMobil alleges that the company has promoted advanced recycling, at least in part, to avoid that outcome — what it sees as "the 'negative' impacts/consequences of the ... adoption of the circular economy way of thinking." Advanced recycling allows the industry to present the public with a seemingly acceptable solution that doesn't put limits on plastic production. It provides the industry with the cover of a perfect technological solution that demands no changes in the way we use plastics.

This is just a new version of the same story: the plastics industry's attempt to use the idea of recycling to protect its license to operate and continue producing ever-greater amounts of plastic, regardless of the consequences.