Pioneers in the industrial use of products from plastics' chemical recycling

Our intent is to boost the new Circular Economy model by promoting a large amount of plastic waste, that currently goes to landfill, transforming it into new raw materials for our petrochemical processes.

The Zero project is an initiative that aims to take advantage of the synthetic oils, obtained from the chemical recycling of plastic waste streams at the end of their life cycle, which cannot be recycled otherwise in a traditional mechanical way. We have been working with these products and new technologies, together with various companies, for quite some time, having managed to experimentally incorporate these products into our petrochemical process on an industrial scale at our Puertollano complex in 2015.

This technology grants Repsol a twofold opportunity to support the Circular Economy. Firstly, with an alternative raw material for the Refining business. Secondly, enabling our Chemical business to offer their clients polymers from a plastic to plastic source with comparable properties. A potential solution, based on the Circular Economy, to the problem of plastic waste to landfill, to close their life cycle.

The plastics’ chemical recycling alternatives, which are commencing their industrial scale-up, complement the already existing ones, such as, mechanical recycling. A line of work, in which we have also focused our efforts via our Reciclex project, to develop a product range that incorporates a percentage of recycled plastics in its formulation.