Energy giant ExxonMobil announced today plans to establish an advanced recycling operation in Baytown Texas. The operation will be the company’s first large-scale plastic waste advanced recycling facility, and one of the largest in North America, with initial planned capacity to recycle 30,000 metric tons of plastic waste per year. The facility is expected to start operations by the end of next year.

Exxon also outlined plans for approximately 500,000 metric tons of advanced recycling capacity globally to be built out over the next five years. The company is assessing sites in the Netherlands, the U.S. Gulf Coast, Canada, and Singapore, and is collaborating with chemical recycling company Plastic Energy on the development of an advanced recycling plant in Notre Dame de Gravenchon, France. The France site is expected to start up in 2023 with capacity to process 25,000 metric tons of plastic waste per year, and the potential to expand to 33,000 metric tons.

According to Exxon, the facilities aim to help address the problems of plastic waste by recycling plastic back into raw materials, for use in new products. The company said that it already has an operational facility that is expected to produce commercial volumes of circular polymers by the end of this year.

Karen McKee, President of ExxonMobil Chemical Company, said:

“We’ve proven our proprietary advanced recycling technology in Baytown, and we’re scaling up operations to supply certified circular polymers by year-end. Availability of reliable advanced recycling capacity will play an important role in helping address plastic waste in the environment, and we are evaluating wide-scale deployment in other locations around the world.”