CEO Fights Back for Plastic Recycling

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This morning, ExxonMobil Chairman and CEO Darren Woods joined the hosts of CNBC’s Squawk Box for a discussion on ExxonMobil’s lawsuit against California Attorney General Rob Bonta and several environmental activist groups, which the company filed last week. The suit claims Bonta made misleading and disparaging statements about the company’s advanced plastics recycling initiatives.

In the interview, Woods points to the evolution of the advanced recycling manufacturing process and the dynamic innovations underway today:

“Plastic today is not a simple, single element of plastic. They are very complicated structures to achieve the properties that we’re looking for in the use of plastic. And so many of those properties make them inconsistent for mechanical recycling, which is the technology that exists today.

“What we’ve done is taken a fundamental step forward and taken those plastics, no matter how mixed or commingled or complicated they are, and we break that plastic back down to the molecular level so that we can reuse those molecules…  We do that by breaking that plastic back down to its fundamental elements at the molecular level. That’s a very different approach and will unlock the ability to recycle plastics today that can’t be addressed with the current technology.

“But, there is a huge challenge in collecting this plastic and getting it to units like ours to recycle them. We’re actually investing in supporting firms who do that, who collect the waste, sort it, and then deliver it to our sites.”

Since the 1970s when recycling was first introduced for plastic containers, innovations in design have led to plastics being used in vastly more applications across industries like aerospace, medicine, food safety, and biotech. With that progress, however, plastic products have become more complex and, in some cases, more difficult to break down. That’s why plastic makers are investing in new solutions, such as advanced recycling technologies.

Woods also points out that it’s ironic California Attorney General Rob Bonta “is taking a position on wanting to improve the environment [but] is doing a lot to block an advanced technology that, frankly, is going to keep billions of pounds of plastic waste from landfills or from being incinerated and recycling them back into products that society uses.”  Woods adds that his company has invested $200 million in this technology to date and “recycled 80 million pounds of plastic that otherwise would have gone to landfills. And we have plans to ramp that recycling up to a billion pounds by 2027.”

Mr. Woods’ full interview with CNBC can be viewed here.


Ross Eisenberg
President
America’s Plastic Makers TM