Virgin plastic, made directly from oil, is a commodity priced like one. Its wide availability and lack of differentiation mean that low prices win and the market fluctuates within a range that limits profitability and depends on volume and availability.
Recycled plastics, however, operate more like a premium brand. Customers are willing to pay more because they are buying based on factors beyond price and availability. Many large companies, including Coca-Cola, Unilever, and Nestlé, have stated sustainability goals that include reducing carbon emissions and greatly increasing the use of recycled plastics.
Environmental Benefits of Recycled Plastic
- Reduces Plastic Waste – Recycled plastic helps keep plastic waste out of landfills and oceans, reducing pollution.
- Lowers Carbon Footprint – Recycling plastic requires less energy than producing virgin plastic, leading to lower greenhouse gas emissions.
- Conserves Natural Resources – Virgin plastic is made from fossil fuels like petroleum and natural gas. Recycling plastic reduces the demand for these nonrenewable resources.
- Decreases Energy Consumption—Producing recycled plastic typically uses less energy than manufacturing new plastic from raw materials.
- Reduces Toxic Pollution – Virgin plastic production releases harmful chemicals and pollutants, while recycling reduces the need for these emissions.
Economic & Practical Benefits
- Supports Circular Economy – Encouraging the use of recycled plastic promotes a sustainable production cycle, reducing reliance on single-use plastics.
- Consumer & Brand Preference – Many consumers prefer eco-friendly products, making recycled plastic an attractive option for companies looking to improve sustainability.
- Regulatory Compliance – Some governments and regions require or incentivize the use of recycled content, helping businesses stay compliant with regulations.
To reach these goals, consumer product companies need new, more efficient technologies for plastic recycling. Current methods, including mechanical recycling and pyrolysis, require too much sorting and cleaning to be practical while also releasing too much carbon to be beneficial.
New Technologies to Watch
Plenty of technologies are closer to the concept stage than the reality stage, and plenty of companies haven’t panned out at all. A few private companies, like Mura Technology and Licella, may be worth keeping an eye on. Here are two public companies with fairly developed plastic recycling technologies. We’ll take a brief look at PureCycle Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: PCT) and Aduro Clean Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ: ADUR) (CSE: ACT) (FSE: 9D50) to see how they are progressing.
PureCycle
This is the most well-known and advanced company of the bunch. Procter & Gamble, one of the world’s largest consumer packaged goods companies, developed a new technology that uses solvents to dissolve polypropylene plastic, remove contaminants, liquefy the remaining polymers, and produce clean polypropylene pellets for use in a wide range of products. PureCycle was created in partnership with the tech commercializing firm Innventure to bring the solution to market.
Polypropylene is known as plastic #5 in the packaging industry but is also ubiquitous in clothing and carpets. Though it accounts for more than 25% of global plastic production, virtually none is recycled worldwide.
In its most recent Q4 2024 conference call, PureCycle discussed the pricing of its product as it anticipates generating meaningful revenue for the first time in 2025. While prices for virgin polypropylene vary geographically, the price in North America is currently around $1.23/kg, or about $0.56/pound. PureCycle is comfortable selling its recycled polypropylene for $1.36/pound. That would translate to a 70% premium over virgin polypropylene in North America.
The company’s pellets have been approved by the U.S. FDA for use in food-grade applications, cosmetics, and personal care products. The approval puts recycled resin on par with virgin polypropylene in terms of its legal use in consumer goods.
Currently, PureCycle trades at a valuation of approximately $1.5 billion on top of about $500 million in debt (enterprise value of ~ $2 billion).
Aduro
Shell, the world’s second largest investor-owned oil and gas company, selected Aduro Clean Technologies to participate in the Shell GameChanger program. The program is designed to speed Aduro’s path to commercialization of its patented Hydrochemolytic™ technology, a water-based chemical process capable of recycling and upgrading almost any type of plastic. Compared to competing technologies, Aduro’s process is touted as a less expensive, more efficient, lower emission, and highly scalable solution.
Watch investor Mariusz Skonieczny break down the premium pricing opportunity in front of Aduro here.
Aduro’s system offers potential advantages over many competitors because it can work with a wide variety of plastic types rather than focusing on just one or two. Aduro has shown it can efficiently recycle polypropylene, polystyrene, and polyethylene—these types of plastic represent about 70% of the plastic currently entering municipal waste systems in the United States.
Aduro is currently building its third generation of increasingly complex demonstration units. The Next Generation Pilot Plant is on track to be completed in Q3 2025. One more commercial-scale unit will be built, and the design will start later this year. Aduro’s technology utilizes only widely available industrial components, is scalable from small to very large, and can be configured in various ways to meet individual customer needs relative to the type of feedstock and the type of end product required.
Read Aduro’s blog post analyzing the European Union’s ambitious new Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR).
About a year or two behind PureCycle, Aduro Clean Technologies is currently valued around $150 million. Analysts at D. Boral Capital, formerly EF Hutton LLC, recently initiated coverage of Aduro with a Buy rating and a price target of $50. The stock currently trades in the $5.30/share range.
The Upshot
Aduro figures its total addressable market for plastics will be about $120 billion by 2030. PureCycle doesn’t have that figure in its presentation, but its market, even for polypropylene alone, is enormous. Both companies should benefit from the premium pricing dynamics involved with selling high-quality recycled plastics. The world is demanding solutions like these companies are offering, and both are teetering on the edge of commercializing their products.
