OPINION | PACKAGING


Professor Edward Kosior writes that the JRC’s chemical recycling report points the way to advancing plastics recycling by balancing chemical and mechanical approaches


Food-grade polyolefins and the capacity recyclers already have


When the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) published its recent cost analysis of chemical recycling in the EU, most of the early commentary framed it as another round in the mechanical-versus-chemical debate. For recyclers and reprocessors deciding where to put capital over the next few years, that framing misses the point. The report in fact is less a verdict on a technology than a signal about where invest- ment in sorting and decontamination capacity will pay back fastest – and it argues, more directly than most industry data has so far, for upgrading the mechanical recycling capacity that already exists rather than waiting on chemical recycling to scale.


What the report actually measured Economic viability of chemical recycling – Current


10 PLASTICS RECYCLING WORLD | September 2026


and future perspectives examined the two chemical recycling routes that account for essentially all current EU capacity: pyrolysis, used for polyolefins and polystyrene, and solvolysis, used for PET and polyurethane. The headline number is stark. Chemically


recycled polymers currently cost 1.5 to 3.5 times more than virgin material. For pyrolysis – the relevant pathway to PP and PE and the one most directly competing with mechanical recyclers’ own output – the multiple is 1.4 to 3.7, driven largely by yields of only 30-50% relative to plastic waste input, plus significant energy demand and challenging feedstock preparation costs. Solvolysis fares better on yield, regularly


exceeding 90%, but even so, solvolysis-derived PET remains more expensive than food-grade virgin or


www.plasticsrecyclingworld.com


IMAGE: KUNSTSTOFF RECYCLING GRÜNSTADT


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