Making plastics more sustainable using advanced recycling techniques

Duncan Lugton at The Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) explains how technologies make plastics more sustainable.

While critical to modern society, plastics pose major challenges to the health of our planet. The problem is not their existence, but the systems that govern how they are produced, used and recovered. Despite decades of innovation, those systems still fail to capture the full value of material already in circulation and protect the environment from the harm of plastic waste.

By 2040, more than 30 million tonnes of plastic waste is expected to enter the environment, while plastics across their lifecycle could generate 2.8Gt of greenhouse gas emissions, close to 5% of the global total. Yet a blanket ban on plastics is unrealistic given their widespread use in critical industry sectors, from food safety and healthcare to transport and energy.

Therefore, building systems that can reclaim and reuse plastics already in circulation and any future plastics entering the system offers a more compelling route to reducing environmental impact than eliminating plastics outright. Working alongside mechanical recycling, chemical recycling raises overall recovery rates, enables high-quality recycled content for demanding applications and reduces reliance on fossil-derived feedstocks. Essentially, this is adopting a strategy that treats existing plastics as a usable resource rather than a long-term liability.

Process engineering sits at the centre of this transition. Plastic Energy, a UK-headquartered chemical recycling company, has refined its Thermal Anaerobic Conversion (TAC) process to convert soft plastic waste into an oil known as TACOIL. The oil serves as a feedstock for new plastics, reducing the need to extract and process virgin fossil materials. Because the process recovers chemical value from waste, it requires significantly less energy than producing plastics from raw hydrocarbons.

Successive plant generations reflect systematic optimisation of heat management, reaction conditions and process integration, lowering energy use while improving yield and reliability. The latest TAC plants show how engineering discipline translates circular economy ambition into practical industrial performance.

Deployment is accelerating across Europe with more commercial plants, while at the same time countries across Asia are beginning to realise the need for a solution. Scaling these systems successfully is made possible by having chemical engineers with deep expertise in process design, optimisation and hazard management.

Th technological transition is attracting engineers who want to work in environments where sustainability is central to the mission. Plastics, once seen as a settled industry, now present clear opportunities to deliver large-scale, positive environmental impact through improved circularity.

The circular economy is not an abstract ambition but a practical engineering challenge. Circularity, therefore, depends on systems thinking rather than isolated interventions. Technology enables progress, but delivery depends on coordination. There is a need to connect decisions at each stage to real-world outcomes, translating circular economy ambition into workable industrial practice and enabling plastics to move from environmental liability to sustainable materials that support progress toward net zero.

Plastics will remain essential materials for modern life. The task now is to ensure they sit within systems designed for resilience and reuse rather than disposal.