Europe (Parliament Politics Magazine) – ExxonMobil has paused €100M in European plastic recycling investments, citing draft EU rules on recycled content requirements in final products.
In order to treat 80,000 metric tons of plastic trash annually, the U.S. energy company has two chemical recycling programs at its current factories in Rotterdam and Antwerp.
In an interview with Reuters, Senior Vice President Jack Williams stated that the two projects had been put on hold due to draft EU regulations that, in his opinion, discriminated against the usage of standalone facilities as opposed to existing petrochemical plants.
“Everything else is on track. We’ve had local support,”
he said.
“We want to make these investments… The only thing standing between us and doing this project is EU policy.”
A draft law that bases the amount of recycled content on the mass of garbage entering the system and the mass of the output is under question.
According to ExxonMobil, it penalizes more complicated integrated plants that use fossil feedstocks and greatly favors standalone systems where the route from plastic waste to product is more obvious.
According to Williams, its facilities would receive fewer than half of the credits that are owed under the draft law.
A month ago, the public comment on the draft came to a close. Companies and industry associations, such as Finland’s Neste, agree with Exxon.
By 2030, the EU wants to see a 30% recycled content in plastic bottles, among other goals to boost plastic recycling rates.
According to the industry, chemical recycling which may break down more complex plastics into their most basic chemicals and mechanical recycling which reprocesses garbage without altering its chemical structure must be combined.
Additionally, Williams stated that while EU regulations posed a substantial challenge for the corporation, U.S. import duties did not.
In particular, he called on the EU to revoke the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), which mandates that bigger businesses verify if their supply chains involve forced labor or harm the environment.
According to Williams, it was applied outside of the EU and was complicated, expensive, bureaucratic, and often impossible to accomplish. The rules have already been loosened and their implementation postponed by the EU.
What are the upcoming EU regulations on plastic recycling standards?
Approved by the European Council in December 2024 and commencing on February 2025, this regulation requires all plastic packaging placed in the EU market to be 100% recyclable by 2030, requiring packaging designed to be fully aligned with existing recycling technologies, with performance emerging as a criterion to determine not just “theoretical recyclability” of packaging but actual recyclability. There are targets to manage and reduce packaging usage by 5% by 2030 limited to 10% by 2035 and 15% by 2040.
A number of types of single-use plastic packaging will also be banned by 2030 including packaging for fresh produce and food served for consumption in the hospitality sector.
Retailers will be required to offer reusable packaging and allow customers to bring their own containers, without charge.