Cyclyx announces new plastic recycling facility
Cyclyx International has announced it has signed an agreement with ExxonMobil and LyondellBasell to develop a first-of-its-kind plastic waste sorting and processing facility in the Greater Houston area.
Cyclyx is a post-use plastic innovation company working to develop innovative recycling solutions for all types of plastics. It was founded by leading recycling technology company Agilyx, a business that the Virgin Group is proud to invest in.
The new Cyclyx facility will address a critical missing link in the plastic waste supply chain by connecting community recycling programmes to new and more advanced recycling technologies. These have the potential to take a wider variety of plastic materials.
The Cyclyx Circulatory Center will be unique among plastic recovery facilities, with new technologies enabling it to analyse plastics based on their composition and sort them according to customer specifications for their highest and best reuse.
The centre will be located in the Greater Houston area, with commercial operations expected to start in 2024. It will be designed to produce 150,000 metric tonnes (330 million pounds) of plastic feedstock, the recycled materials that can be used as resources to manufacture new plastics, per year. This will supply ExxonMobil and LyondellBasell advanced recycling projects as well as mechanical recycling markets. Total investment for the first centre is estimated to be $100 million, dependent on a final investment decision in early 2023.
“This project serves as proof of how significant the need is for custom blended plastics feedstock,” stated Joe Vaillancourt, CEO of Cyclyx. “With our capability to accept and process a wide range of waste plastics based on their chemistry profile which we custom blend to the needs of our customers, we are creating a new set of recycling options for difficult-to-recycle waste plastics that today are sent to landfill. Our circularity centres will allow us to make available a much larger amount of waste plastic into usable feedstock than has been possible with the current recycling infrastructure. Additional circularity centres are under consideration on the Gulf Coast and other locations.”
Cyclyx, ExxonMobile and LyondellBasell are all members of the Houston Recycling Collaboration, which is on a mission to help the City of Houston significantly increase plastic recycling rates, leveraging new technologies and infrastructure – such as this Cyclyx facility – to recycle nearly all plastics.
Cyclyx also recently announced a partnership with Virgin Red, the rewards club from the Virgin Group, which will reward members with Virgin Points for recycling their plastic through the 10 to 90 programmes.
Visit Cyclyx to find out more.