SPRING,
Texas, April 27, 2023 /CNW/ -- In 2022, industry
leaders ExxonMobil, Cyclyx International, Sealed Air, and
Ahold Delhaize USA announced their
intention to be the first in the United
States to successfully launch a circular food packaging
proof of concept leveraging advanced recycling. During a successful
demo, plastic waste was collected from grocery stores, diverting it
from landfills. Leveraging ExxonMobil's Exxtend™ technology
for advanced recycling, which breaks the plastic waste into its
molecular building blocks and attributes the certified-circular
share via mass balance accounting, the plastic waste was
converted to new food-grade packaging. This collaboration
demonstrated that creating a circular economy is achievable with
value chain collaboration. Following a viable test, the process is
now being evaluated for scale.
- Circular solution for food packaging waste was first of its
kind in the U.S.
- Flexible plastic waste from the food supply chain was recycled
and attributed to ISCC PLUS certified-circular polymers used for
new food-grade packaging
- First announced in April 2022,
the project is now being evaluated for scalability
Creating a circular economy for food contact plastic packaging
in applications where there are strict safety and performance
requirements is a difficult challenge facing the industry.
"This project helps demonstrate how Exxtend technology can widen
the range of plastic materials that can be recycled while
delivering certified-circular polymers with the critical
performance attributes of virgin plastic," said Dan Moore, vice president, Polyethylene,
ExxonMobil. "Advanced recycling is making the impossible possible
and is an important enabler to support a circular economy."
Ahold Delhaize USA brand Food
Lion supported the initial pilot, collecting plastic waste for
recycling at select store locations. With more than 1,100 stores
across 10 states, Food Lion is one of the five brands that comprise
the Ahold Delhaize USA network –
the largest grocery retail group on the East Coast and the fourth
largest in the nation.
"Across Ahold Delhaize USA
companies, we have ambitious goals around recyclable and reusable
packaging," said Adam Springer,
manager, Product Sustainability, Ahold Delhaize USA. "Based on the initial pilot, we're
optimistic about being able to leverage this process at additional
scale and look forward to exploring it further as part of this
collaboration."
Cyclyx, a joint venture between Agilyx Corporation and
ExxonMobil, was responsible for sorting and pre-processing the
waste packaging materials collected from the Food Lion stores,
before delivering them to ExxonMobil's Baytown, Texas facility. "The interface
between the Food Lion stores and the Baytown facility was critical and required an
innovative approach to feedstock management," said Joe Vaillancourt, CEO, Cyclyx. "Part of our
process is to identify the chemical composition of the waste
plastics we receive. This allows us to create custom blends of
post-use plastic feedstock that are tailored to the specifications
required for advanced recycling."
At the Baytown facility,
Exxtend technology for advanced recycling is used to recycle the
valuable end of life plastics and attribute them via mass balance
accounting to certified-circular polymers. "The technology provides
a reliable source to attribute to high-performance,
certified-circular polymers," Moore said. "The resulting
polymers, such as Exceed™ S, Exceed™ XP, Exceed™ and Enable™
performance polyethylene (PE), have the characteristics of virgin
resins, which is critical for food-grade packaging."
Sealed Air, which is leading the packaging industry by designing
and creating high-performance packaging materials that can be
remade, converts the certified-circular PE resins into food-grade
flexible film that is used, in the case of this proof of concept,
to package select Nature's Promise fresh poultry. The packaging
then returns to stores used on products purchased by customers,
demonstrating an example of the circular economy.
"By collaborating with suppliers and customers, we were able to
identify, design, and commercialize an innovative flexible
packaging solution which supports circularity," said Ron Cotterman, vice president, Global Corporate
Affairs, Sealed Air.
Leveraging ExxonMobil's existing manufacturing assets, Exxtend
technology can be rapidly scaled to process a wide range of plastic
waste. To help meet the growing market demand for
certified-circular plastics, ExxonMobil plans to increase its
annual advanced recycling capacity to 500,000 metric tons, or
approximately 1 billion pounds, by year-end 2026 across multiple
sites globally.
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SOURCE ExxonMobil