Expanding the plastics life cycle

Plastics make modern life possible–and they’re too valuable to waste.

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Plastic products help defend against disease, preserve food, and are used in medical equipment that saves lives.

As described in our Global Outlook, prosperity and population are expected to grow around the world between now and 2050. Plastics will be instrumental in supporting many of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, including good health, food preservation, and clean drinking water.

As living standards increase, plastics allow society to do more with less material and often with a smaller environmental footprint than alternatives. A recent U.S.-based study found that polyethylene (PE) packaging—the most widely used plastic packaging—can reduce lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions by up to 70% compared to alternative materials like glass, paper, and aluminum.1

In transportation, plastics enable lighter vehicles, driving a 6% to 8% fuel efficiency gain for every 10% reduction in weight.2 The electric vehicle industry also relies on plastics to produce lightweight cars to extend battery range.

In agriculture, the plastic films made from our polymers support farming around the world by enabling:

  • Durable solutions for greenhouses that help farmers grow their crops all year long.
  • Long-lasting mulch solutions that use less material and help increase crop production rates by reducing the frequent need to collect and replace used plastic film.
  • Tough, puncture-resistant films for grain silos to reduce loss and spoilage.

Plastics are increasingly society’s material of choice due to their functional benefits and have overall lower life cycle greenhouse gas emissions compared to alternative materials in most applications.

Our approach

To meet society’s evolving needs, our efforts are focused both on enabling the societal benefits plastics provide and helping address the global issue of plastic waste. Our approach includes:

  • Expanding our advanced recycling capacity to help further broaden the range of plastics that can be recycled;
  • Developing plastic solutions that enable our customers to make products that use less plastic; and
  • Supporting improvements in plastic waste recovery, gathering, and sorting.
Even lower-demand scenarios like the International Energy Agency’s Net Zero by 2050 (IEA NZE) project growth in plastics.

Supporting a more circular economy for plastics with advanced recycling

Mismanaged plastic waste is a global problem. We believe that a more circular economy for plastics is an important part of the solution.

Around the world, only about 9% of all plastics are recycled.3 Even in areas with better waste and recycling infrastructure, like the European Union, less than 27% of plastic waste is recycled4 once it leaves consumers’ hands. The rest is burned for energy, goes to landfills, or is discarded to the environment.

There are better uses for these materials.

We are helping to address the plastic waste challenge through advanced recycling (sometimes called chemical recycling) – giving plastic waste another life as new products that people need.

Many products are difficult to recycle through mechanical recycling – the traditional method of grinding and melting plastic waste. But when both are used, mechanical recycling and advanced recycling could enable more types of plastic waste to be recycled. 

With advanced recycling, plastic waste is broken down at the molecular level. This allows even complex blends of plastics to be turned back into usable raw materials. These are identical to the raw materials produced during the processing of fossil-based feedstocks and can be used to make a wide range of valuable products, including fuels, lubricants, and high-performance chemicals and plastics.

ExxonMobil’s technology for advanced recycling is not burning waste, which would consume the molecules and make it impossible to make new products out of them. Instead, we use a technology called “pyrolysis” to convert about 90% of the processed plastic waste into usable raw materials – a highly efficient process. For every ton of certified-circular plastics sold, more than a ton of plastic waste avoids other end-of-life dispositions like landfill or incineration.5

For every ton of plastic waste processed through advanced recycling, society reduces the need to process

~ 1 ton

of fossil-derived feedstocks.

Waste plastic process graphic
*ISCC PLUS mass balance approach using the “determined by mass” option with “certified free attribution” applied.
Does not represent GHG emissions or recycled content.

We sell certified-circular plastics corresponding to the amount of plastic waste we transform back into usable raw materials. We do this using a mass balance approach that has been used in other industries for many years. 

What is mass balance? In short, it is an accounting process that can be used in complex value chains like ours in which one input (e.g., plastic waste) is mixed with other inputs in a way that the different inputs cannot be physically traced throughout the system. This widely used approach helps our customers match the volume of their certified-circular plastic purchase to a corresponding amount of plastic waste that we transformed into usable raw materials through advanced recycling.

Similar concepts are used in other sectors to help customers and society keep track of their impact. For example, if you buy “renewable energy” from your electricity provider, you’re paying for that energy to be generated and added to the grid, but the electricity that reaches your house might come from a mix of sources.

Our advanced recycling facilities and process are certified via an independent, third-party certification system called International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) PLUS. ISCC is an association of more than 240 members, including research institutes and NGOs.

The certificate we provide our customers is not a claim that our certified-circular plastics contain specific amounts of “recycled content” or carry GHG benefits. Rather, it represents an assurance that we followed a rigorous mass balance attribution system that is certified by a third-party. This enables us to be transparent about our products, helping our customers, and their customers, progress and communicate circularity goals.

Scaling up capacity to meet growing demand

There is rising demand from consumers and customers for circularity, far more than mechanical recycling can provide. Purchasing certified-circular plastics can enable our customers to achieve circularity goals, such as:

  • Unlocking the value of plastic waste by converting it into useful raw materials;
  • Monetizing the value of plastic waste to drive better collection and sorting;
  • Contributing to the growth of the recycling sector; and
  • Accelerating plastic recycling rates.
Baytown facility

We are uniquely positioned with our scale, integration, and technology to rapidly expand advanced recycling capacity and help meet the needs of our customers and communities. Customers so far include Sealed Air, Ahold Delhaize, Berry Global, Pactiv Evergreen, and Amcor, all supporting a more circular economy for food packaging.

Our Baytown advanced recycling facility started up commercial-scale operations in December 2022. In late 2024, we announced plans to invest more than $200 million to expand advanced recycling operations in Baytown and Beaumont, Texas. The investment will add 350 million pounds per year of advanced recycling capacity at these two sites, bringing our total capacity to 500 million pounds per year.

As of December 2024, our Baytown site has processed more than 80 million pounds of end-of-life plastic – with more to come as we collaborate to get more plastic collected, sorted, and ready to process.

We are continuing to develop additional advanced recycling projects at manufacturing sites in North America, Europe and Asia, with the goal of reaching 1 billion pounds per year of advanced recycling capacity globally.

Increasing recycling rates through collaboration and innovation

Like most complex environmental challenges, broad collaboration is needed to address the issue of mismanaged waste. This includes sound policy and investment in waste-management infrastructure. Through organizations such as the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, we collaborate across the value chain to increase plastic waste collection and sorting to help support a more circular economy for plastics.

In December 2023, Cyclyx, our joint venture with Agilyx Corp. and LyondellBasell, announced plans to build its first Cyclyx Circularity Center (CCC). This first-of-its-kind plastic waste processing facility will have the capacity to produce 300 million pounds of plastic feedstock per year to be used in both advanced and mechanical recycling of post-consumer, commercial, and industrial plastic waste. As a founding member of the Houston Recycling Collaboration, ExxonMobil is working with others in industry and government to increase access to plastic recycling in the Houston area in support of the CCC. 

Responsible manufacturing: the right products the right way

Our VistmaxxTM performance polymers make recycling easier by making polyethylene and polypropylene more compatible, which allows them to “mix in the melt” and removes the need for mechanical recyclers to separate these materials for processing. 

Collaboration, again, leads to even better results. For example, ExxonMobil Asia Pacific Research & Development Co., Ltd partnered with Shantou Mingca Packaging earlier this year on an ultra-low density shrink film that can be manufactured with minimal adjustments in production lines. More importantly, it can be more easily recycled in communities with programs and facilities in place to collect plastic film, even by traditional recyclers, as certified by TÜV Rheinland, a global leader in inspection services.

Our efforts are further supported by our systems to responsibly manage plastics manufacturing, including the global standards we have set across all of our resin-handling operations. These standards are more stringent than the laws and regulations related to plastic pellet loss in many of the places we operate, and we collaborate with industry through Operation Clean Sweep-Blue to share best practices.6

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    FOOTNOTES:

    1. Based on the 2025 study “Polyethylene packaging and alternative materials in the United States: A life cycle assessment” (Science of the Total Environment). Full study: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048969724085176?via%3Dihub.
    2. Department of Energy statements at https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/lightweight-materials-cars-and-trucks.
    3. Based on OECD Global Plastics Outlook: https://www.oecd.org/content/dam/oecd/en/publications/reports/2022/02/global-plastics-outlook_a653d1c9/de747aef-en.pdf
    4. Plastics Europe: The Circular Economy for Plastics: A European Analysis
    5. Certified-circular plastics are virgin-quality plastics that are accompanied by a certificate that matches the mass of virgin quality plastics that we sell to a corresponding amount of plastic waste that we transformed back into usable raw materials through advanced recycling.
    6. Pellet loss refers to the unintended release of plastic resin into the environment during manufacturing, transportation, handling, or processing.