Where does chemical recycling of plastics go from here?

Both the US and EU authorities have championed chemical recycling – also called advanced recycling – as a possible way to deal with hard-to-recycle materials like soft plastic films and mixed-material packaging, which are difficult to recycle mechanically. But while these processes are technically feasible, they are still in their infancy in terms of scaling – chemically recycled materials made up less than 1% of all recycled plastics production in Europe in 2024.