German environmental services provider Interzero has declared its strong support for chemical recycling, positioning the technology as an essential pillar of Europe’s transition to a circular economy. The company argues that while mechanical recycling must remain the primary pathway for clean, monomaterial waste streams, chemical processes are urgently needed to tackle highly contaminated or mixed plastic fractions that are currently incinerated or sent to landfill.
This endorsement from a major European waste management player highlights a shifting consensus in continental recycling strategy. As the European Union tightens its Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR), packaging converters face steep targets for recycled content, particularly in food-contact applications where mechanically recycled polyolefins often fall short of safety standards. Chemical recycling offers a route to break down complex polymers back into their chemical building blocks, yielding virgin-quality feedstock.
For UK waste companies and Turkish recyclers exporting to the European market, this development signals a shifting regulatory and commercial landscape. Turkish recyclers, who are key suppliers of recycled polymers to Europe, must monitor how EU regulators define and credit chemically recycled content under mass-balance accounting rules. If chemical recycling capacity scales up rapidly in Europe, it could alter the demand dynamics for low-grade plastic scrap, potentially driving up feedstock prices or diverting mixed waste streams that Turkish processors currently import for mechanical sorting and washing.
Furthermore, from a carbon reporting perspective, chemical recycling is more energy-intensive than mechanical processing. UK and Turkish operators will need to carefully evaluate the lifecycle emissions of their products. As carbon border adjustment mechanisms and corporate Scope 3 emissions reporting become more stringent, maintaining the carbon efficiency advantage of high-quality mechanical recycling will be crucial.
The practical takeaway for the sector is the need to future-proof feedstock sorting. Rather than viewing chemical recycling as a threat, mechanical recyclers should optimise their sorting lines to separate high-value polymers for mechanical processing, whilst positioning their residual, hard-to-recycle fractions as valuable feedstock for emerging chemical recycling plants.
