INNOVATION | CHEMICAL RECYCLING
Mass balance: on the road to regulation
One of the main difficulties in the implementation of chemical recycling has been the lack of regulation regarding recycled content. Until now, it was unclear whether the allocation of recy- cled content through a mass balance approach would be accepted as “recycled content”. Last February, the European Commission revealed the details of its mass balance approach under the Single Use Plastics Directive (SUPD). The implementing act adopted a “fuel-use excluded” mass balance approach, and while it currently only applies to recycled PET, it intends to be used as a framework for mass balance accounting rules across EU recycling legislation – and large parts of the mass balance calculation methods appear to be targeted at pyrolysis. Material that is processed into fuel or process losses cannot contribute to recycled content claims. Free allocation would be permissible for the remaining tonnage, provided that the attrib- uted amounts are allocated to outputs where they could poten- tially belong: the output could be produced by that chemical process. The amount attributed to a specific output must not exceed the share that can effectively come from the input material, and both the inputs and outputs are polymers. Also, mass-balance accounting must be carried out within three months and calculated for each facility, meaning that calculations are not transferable between facility or company. Industry groups have welcomed the definition, bringing clarity for chemical recycling investments. Virginia Janssens, Managing Director, Plastics Europe, stated: “The decision reinforces the need for a technology-neutral approach and aligns with the Commission’s recognition of chemical recycling as an essential complement to other recycling technologies, such as mechanical recycling, in meeting recycled content targets”. She said: “The rules approved under the SUPD, which is limited to
PET bottles, now need to be optimised for upcoming legislation with broader polymer and product scope, such as for the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation and End of Life Vehicles Regulation”.
European Commission’s Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) tightens requirements for recyclable packaging and documented recycled content by 2030. InFact is designed to help industry translate these requirements into practical circular infrastructure. “No single company can create these solutions alone. That is why InFACT matters: the project brings the full value chain together to develop the infrastructure the food industry will need”, said Birgitte Krenk, Nordic Head of Operations at Nestlé. The Dutch Government granted €1.5m to a new
project called CLEAN (catalytic low-temperature efficiency for advanced decontamination), that aims to dewater, decontaminate and depolymerize polyolefin films for use in chemical production via thermal pyrolysis. The partners are BlueAlp, providing its thermal pyrolysis technology; Renewi, with experience in separating, sorting and densify- ing polyolefin films; Shell, conveying competence to transform pyrolysis oil into chemicals, and Utrecht University, providing development of materials for adsorption and catalysis.
India project In India, PolyCycl received a Series A investment from Rainmatter, a climate and sustainability- focused investment initiative of Zerodha. The investment supports the next phase of deployment of PolyCycl’s technology platform, a fully continu- ous chemical recycling technology which converts low-grade waste such as contaminated single-use PE bags into liquid hydrocarbons, following a cost-effective segregation method, waterless pretreatment and fully-continuous thermo-chemi- cal conversion process. These outputs are further refined using a proprietary purification system and are supplied as feedstock to petrochemicals for low carbon materials. Abhinav Singh Negi, Business and Investments, Rainmatter by Zerodha, said: “We want to back
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