TotalEnergies, SABIC, and Saudi Aramco have worked together to take oil created from plastic waste and use it to generate circular polymers. In a first for the Middle East and North Africa region, these new circular polymers are ISCC+ certified.
A major barrier to traditional recycling methods is that plastics first need to be sorted into their various types, which can be a time-consuming and costly process. The new advanced recycling process can be used with unsorted plastics, and it is hoped that this can help solve the problem of dealing with plastic waste, while also creating a new value chain for circular polymers in Saudi Arabia.
TotalEnergies, the maker of the Total metalworking products, jointly owns the Jubail ATORP refinery together with Aramco. It processed the plastic waste-derived oil (PDO), which was then forwarded to a SABIC subsidiary for transformation into certified circular polymers which can be used instead of virgin materials to make new products.
A senior vice president for petrochemical and refining at TotalEnergies, Francois Good, said that the company was also exploring other projects for the circular economy, with them:
“…leveraging the partners’ technical expertise and experience to further contribute to plastics recycling. It is a major pathway towards TotalEnergies’ target to produce 30% of recycled plastics by 2030, and its strategy to build a multi-energy company with the ambition to get to net zero by 2050 together with society.”
All the facilities involved have been ISCC+ certified to ensure that the origins of the produced feedstock and polymers are both traceable and transparent.
