ExxonMobil has put on hold a planned €100m ($118.4m) investment into plastic recycling facilities in Europe due to proposed EU regulations, reported Reuters.
The investment was earmarked for two chemical recycling projects at the company’s existing sites in Rotterdam and Antwerp, designed to process a total of 80,000 tonnes of plastic waste per year.
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The company’s senior vice-president, Jack Williams, told Reuters that while local support for the projects was strong, EU policy was the sole barrier preventing their advancement.
“Everything else is on track. We have had local support,” he said. “We want to make these investments… The only thing standing between us and doing this project is EU policy.”
The draft EU legislation at the heart of the issue proposes a method for calculating recycled content that ExxonMobil believes discriminates against integrated facilities, like its own, in favour of stand-alone recycling plants.
Under the draft law, the company’s projects would receive less than half of the intended recycling credits.
This draft has already undergone a public consultation phase, with other industry stakeholders such as Finland’s Neste echoing ExxonMobil’s concerns, the report added.
The EU’s ambitious recycling targets, including 30% recycled content in plastic bottles by 2030, have been cited by the industry as necessitating a combination of mechanical and chemical recycling techniques to process more complex plastics.
In addition to the recycling investment pause, Williams highlighted broader regulatory challenges within the EU.
He urged for the repeal of the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), criticising it as overly complex, bureaucratic and costly, with requirements that extend beyond the EU’s borders and into companies’ supply chains.
In September last year, California initiated legal action against ExxonMobil over its alleged role in the global plastic pollution crisis through misleading campaigns about the effectiveness of recycling.
The lawsuit alleged that Exxon’s ‘advanced recycling’ programme was falsely marketed as a viable solution to plastic waste, despite the company’s apparent knowledge that it could only process a minimal fraction of the plastic waste it produces.
