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Paper short abstract

While mechanical and chemical recycling could support the transformation towards sustainable chemistry, there’s significant controversy whether they would complement or compete with each other. A 2025 survey of international stakeholders provides insights to this question.

Paper long abstract

The chemical sector produces a diversity of intermediates and products which underpin the normal functioning of our society. It thus plays a key role in our society’s sustainability transformation. As chemical production is dependent on carbon resources, the route towards sustainable chemistry entails not only the transformation from (1) fossil to renewables (i.e., electricity requirements but also as resource basis) and from (2) linear to circular carbon economy (i.e., recirculation of carbon-containing waste streams back into the production cycle), but also from (3) a dependence on imported to utilization of domestic carbon resources to increase the sector’s resilience.

Increasingly, recycling – comprising mechanical and chemical recycling – is being highlighted as playing a key role in enabling the achievement of the three building blocks highlighted above for the industry’s sustainability transformation. However, there remains significant controversy regarding whether mechanical and chemical recycling have the potential to complement each other in a recycling cascade, or whether there’s a risk of competition for waste feedstocks which could lead to crowding-out of mechanical by chemical recycling developments.

In our presentation, we explore the potential of mechanical and chemical recycling as transformation routes for the chemical sector in the global context. Additionally, we will present results from a 2025 survey carried out with international stakeholders from industry and science in the recycling and chemical industries to share insights on their perspectives on challenges and opportunities which are associated with the development/deployment of mechanical and chemical recycling to support the transformation towards sustainable chemistry.