ExxonMobil Steps Up to the Plastic Waste Challenge

Plastics are essential to modern life. We use them to make vital products—car parts, kitchen appliances, mobile phones, construction materials, food packaging, greenhouse films, and much more. They are also essential to life-saving products like ventilators, face masks and personal protective equipment.

Plastics can allow us to do more with less material and with a smaller environmental footprint than alternative materials. They can also contribute to achieving certain UN Sustainable Development Goals and support a lower-carbon future.

For example, McKinsey & Company found that plastics can provide a greenhouse gas benefit of 10% to 90% compared to alternatives. Another study, sponsored by the American Chemistry Council, found that the life-cycle emissions impact of U.S. plastic packaging was 54% less than alternative materials as a group, including aluminum, glass, and paper. It said the annual savings was “equivalent to the weight of 290,000 Boeing 747 airplanes.”

But plastic pollution remains a significant challenge in India and the rest of the world. According to some estimates, only 9% of plastic gets recycled globally.

So, how do we accelerate the transition to a circular economy for plastics, and how is ExxonMobil stepping up to the challenge?

Innovating for the Future

One way is product re-design. ExxonMobil’s technology lab in Bengaluru works closely with customers in the country and around the world to design and evaluate new packaging solutions. This includes lightweighting plastics, which helps customers to do more with less, and developing packaging solutions with a blend of mechanically recycled and virgin polymers.

For example, the company collaborated with Indian packaging manufacturer Shrinath Rotopack and packaging-machine maker Syntegon to develop recyclable packaging for dry foods that can replace hard-to-recycle multilayer plastic packaging.

ExxonMobil also teamed up with one of India’s leading salt brands and Oswal Extrusion (a local producer of film laminates) to develop recyclable packaging that is replacing the 1-kilogram salt packets used by the salt maker. The company is pursuing similar initiatives with other brand owners and manufacturers of plastic packaging in the country.

Another tool to address plastic waste is recycling technology. Some plastics are hard to recycle with traditional mechanical recycling methods, and advanced recycling is one of the technologies stepping up to the challenge.

Also known as chemical recycling, this method can process a range of plastics that are generally not mechanically recycled because they are made of films or are designed with complex, multi-layer structures. Some of these are artificial grass, bubble wrap, agricultural films, snack bags, dry cleaner bags, motor oil bottles, plastic shopping bags, etc. With advanced recycling, more of the plastics we rely on every day can be recycled, if proper collection and sorting infrastructure are in place.

Advanced recycling can also address some of the limitations of traditional mechanical recycling, divert plastic waste from getting deposited in landfills or being incinerated, and help meet the increasing demand for circular products.

Impactful Measures

ExxonMobil, one of the largest integrated fuels, lubricants and chemical companies globally, is deploying its proprietary Exxtend™ technology for advanced recycling and collaborating to collect plastic waste so that more plastics can be recycled.

In December 2022, ExxonMobil started up one of North America’s largest advanced plastic-waste recycling facilities in Baytown, Texas. The facility now has the capacity to process up to 40,000 metric tons of plastic waste per year. To meet the growing demand for certified circular plastics, ExxonMobil expects to add global capacity to process 500,000 metric tons of plastic waste annually by year-end 2026.

And advanced recycling is already starting to make an impact right here in India. The company is selling certified-circular plastics, leveraging advanced recycling, in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe and Asia Pacific. In India, ExxonMobil has made its first commercial sale to the country’s largest multinational flexible packaging and solutions company UFlex Limited, which will use these certified-circular plastics to produce high-performance flexible packaging, including food-grade packaging.

At ExxonMobil, we are doing our part to address plastic waste. We’re investing substantially around the world to broaden the range of plastic that can be recycled. We’re also creating new technologies, business approaches and partnerships to enable that circularity.

Along with governments, NGOs and other stakeholders, industry is supporting efforts to achieve a global consensus on addressing plastic pollution. Society needs a flexible global agreement that incentivises innovation and investments like those ExxonMobil is already deploying. This will ensure access to proper waste management, eliminate leakage of plastic into the ocean, and promote circularity.

Plastics have improved and continue to improve the lives of billions. Addressing plastic waste will require a sustained effort from all of us—industry, governments, financial institutions, producers and consumers, and waste-management operations. At ExxonMobil, we look forward to helping society take on this serious challenge.

Exxon Mobil Corporation has numerous affiliates, many with names that include ExxonMobil, Exxon, Esso and Mobil. For convenience and simplicity, those terms and references to “corporation,” “company,” “ExxonMobil,” “EM,” and other similar terms are used for convenience and may refer to one or more specific affiliates or affiliate groups.