Four ways BASF is recycling materials in North America

Mechanical recycling is a solution that can be applied to different classes of materials, including plastics, lithium-ion batteries (commonly found in electric vehicles) and metals.

When it comes to plastic, mechanical recycling is the preferred solution because it’s less expensive and more environmentally friendly. It’s considered to have lower CO₂ emissions than other methods and than producing the same plastic through conventional methods. These materials are collected, sorted, shredded, melted and transformed into secondary raw materials that are then incorporated into BASF’s production chain, giving them new life and use.

However, it comes with its share of challenges. The plastic waste needs to be collected first, which, when it comes to the United States poses a challenge, since only about 15% of plastic waste is collected, unlike for instance, Japan, where the number is closer to 90%.

Once the plastic is collected, it needs to be sorted. This is a key step, since some plastic types cannot be mixed, otherwise the recycled product could not be reused. Fortunately, trinamix GmbH, a subsidiary of BASF, has developed a mobile near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy device that can easily scan a plastic product and identify it in a matter of seconds, simplifying the sorting process.

Cleaning the products is also a challenging part of the process, since it requires removing impurities, as well as labels, inks, adhesives, and any other residue they may have, which in many cases, means the different layers need to be separated in order to effectively clean the entire product.

After that comes reprocessing, which means plastics need to be heated and melted, but this can be really complex. Many times, it’s difficult to identify the source of the plastic, its quality or age, and all of these traits can affect the processing and degrade the polymer, leading to a low-quality product. To avoid this, the plastics need additional chemical stabilizers, and to identify the best solution to avoid poor quality, extensive testing is required.

Learn more about mechanical recycling at BASF

Chemical recycling, which includes several technologies, is a complementary method to mechanical recycling, as it can reutilize products that cannot be recycled mechanically, either because of the cost, the environmental impact or because the final products result in a lower quality or performance. By using both methods, we can increase our recycling rates of plastic waste.

Through this method, the polymer chains of plastics are chemically broken down into building blocks that can then be used as feedstock, for example, in the form of syngas, pyrolysis oil or monomers, without having to incorporate any additional chemicals to the process. This results in products with the same quality as the ones produced from fossil resources.

Chemical recycling can be applied to mixed plastic waste streams, for example, of polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), reducing the costs associated with sorting them.

Pyrolysis can convert approximately 70% of the plastic waste into secondary raw materials. 

One of the most used ways to chemically recycle plastic waste is through thermal decomposition under absence of oxygen, also known as pyrolysis. In its Chemcycling^® initiative, BASF collaborates with pyrolysis technology partners who reprocess post-consumer plastic waste industrially into pyrolysis oil, which is then incorporated as raw material, replacing fossil resources and attributed to manufactured products through the mass balance approach, and carry the suffix “Ccycled^®”. Mass balanced Ccycled^® products, which today are approximately 320, are certified by a third party according to sustainability certification schemes such as REDcert² and ISCC PLUS.

ChemCycling was launched in the U.S. in 2024, at the Port Arthur site in Texas, using secondary feedstock derived from hard-to-recycle or otherwise incinerated mixed plastic waste in BASF’s value chain. An example of a Ccycled^® product is the Ultramid^® line, which meets the quality and hygiene standards for food packaging, textiles, construction, engineering plastics and electric materials.

Learn more about ChemCycling^®

Electric vehicles (EV) have steadily increased in the United States in recent years. In fact, according to Q3 2024 EV sales, the market share has reached almost 9% and this trend is set to continue in the coming years. Batteries are an essential part of EVs, and in order to produce them, they require specific metals, such as lithium, nickel, cobalt and manganese. Although the batteries themselves have a lifespan, the metals do not, and they can be recovered and reutilized.

To ensure a transition into cleaner forms of transportation such as EVs in a sustainable way, we need to recycle batteries and more specifically, the metals inside. In 2023, BASF reached an agreement with Nanotech Energy, the American Battery Technology Company (ABTC) and TODA Advanced Materials Inc. where BASF enables de production of lithium-ion batteries with recycled content, while reducing the dependency on primary mining sources.

Through this process, battery scraps and off-spec materials from Nanotech in California are recycled by ABTC, and the metals recovered by them are then used by both BASF and TODA to develop precursors and cathode active materials, which will then be incorporated by Nanotech into their battery cell production, establishing a local supply of recycled metals and effectively closing the battery loop in North America.

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Catalysts are substances used to enable a chemical reaction to happen at a faster rate or under different conditions, such as at a lower temperature, for example. They have a wide range of applications, including in the automotive, aerospace and air quality industries. BASF not only produces catalysts but recycles them as well.

BASF offers 100% recycled metal under the brand name Verdium^TM, which has a 97% lower carbon footprint than mined metal.

Spent automotive catalysts can have various amounts of precious metal content including platinum, palladium and rhodium. BASF provides a world-class recycling program to retrieve them and transform them into high-grade precious metals to repurpose them or produce new catalysts.

Learn more about catalyst recycling