Dow (Midland, Mich.) and Nexus Circular announced that they have signed a detailed letter of intent (LOI) for Dow to secure the production output of a newly constructed advanced recycling facility in Dallas, Texas. The new facility will process and convert over 26,000 MTs annually of previously non-recycled plastic into circular feedstock that will be delivered back to Dow as a raw material to create new, recycled plastics for food-contact, health, hygiene, and fitness applications.
The LOI builds on Dow and Nexus Circular’s initial joint effort as the chosen advanced recycler for the Hefty EnergyBag program, launched in collaboration between Dow, Reynolds Consumer Products and others, to collect hard-to-recycle plastics at residential curbside to convert them into valued resources. The announcement marks an evolution of the companies’ deepening relationship, from converting hard-to-recycle plastics into energy, to now converting circular feedstock into actual plastic products, making the converted material truly circular.
Nexus Circular is a commercial leader in advanced recycling that uses a proprietary process and pyrolysis (high temperature decomposition) technology to transform waste plastics into high-quality circular feedstocks its partners use in the production of circular polymers. Nexus Circular has optimized the technology to create a highly efficient, economic, commercial and scalable system for delivering cost-effective, high quality and environmentally friendly circular products for its partners and customers. In 2020, Nexus Circular was named a grant recipient of Dow’s Business Impact Fund for the development of pre-processing to incorporate post-consumer, hard-to-recycle plastics collected through the Hefty EnergyBag program in Cobb County, GA.
This current expansion of the Dow-Nexus collaboration into Dallas, among other locations, will result in the further collection and conversion of landfill-bound plastics into plastic products that will be used in consumer applications, in order to help close the used plastics loop. The program builds on the impact of the Hefty EnergyBag which has diverted over 1,800 tons of hard-to-recycle plastics from landfills to date.
“Expanding our past, scaled success with Nexus to drive production of high-quality circular feedstocks, the new facility in Dallas marks an important step in meeting unmet market demand for circular plastics in Texas and other markets,” said Manav Lahoti, Global Sustainability Director for Hydrocarbons at Dow. “We now have an even greater opportunity to close the loop on Dow’s materials through the delivery of Nexus’ circular products back to our plants, further accelerating progress toward our 2030 goal to enable 1 million metric tons of plastic to be collected, reused or recycled.”
Clint Thompson, Nexus Circular’s Chief Commercial Officer added, “We are excited for the next phase of our growing partnership with Dow to build on our joint efforts to extend the life of used plastics. With this meaningful LOI, we’ll be better positioned to collect and convert more landfill-bound waste plastics into new materials using advanced recycling in markets worldwide.”