Indorama leaders say views on PET must evolve to include sustainabilty

Fernandina Beach, Fla. — There's a difference between a million and a billion — obviously — and Yashovardhan Lohia is using that to emphasize Indorama Ventures PCL's commitment to PET recycling: A million seconds lasts almost 12 days. A billion seconds lasts nearly 32 years.

Lohia, executive director and chairman of the environmental, social and governance council at Indorama, uses the math to highlight just how large his company's commitment is to PET recycling.

Indorama is both the world's largest virgin PET maker and the world's largest PET recycler. And the company only wants to recapture more in the years ahead.

Indorama has committed to spending $1.5 billion to enhance its recycling capabilities with a goal of recycling 50 billion bottles per year by 2025 and expects to spend just as much — or more — to then double that to 100 billion bottles per year by 2030. The number stands at about 30 billion these days. Expressed a different way, those bottle numbers equate to 750,000 metric tons (825,000 tons) per year by 2025 and 1.5 million tonnes (1.65 million tons) per year by 2030.

Indorama's recycling push includes the acquisition of three facilities in the United States in recent years. They included the 2021 purchase of the former CarbonLite facility in Dallas.

When Indorama purchased the Dallas site — with a capacity to recycle more than 3 billion PET bottles per year — the company indicated it then had the capacity to handle 10 billion bottles annually in the United States alone.

Lohia, the oldest son of company founder Aloke Lohia, told the audience at the recent Packaging Conference in Fernandina Beach, Fla., the PET business has to honestly look at itself in the mirror, embrace sustainability and leverage the inherent advantages the material has over other substrates in his view.

"In the past, we solely focused on the utility and quality, but now sustainability has become a determining factor of the proposition we give when we talk about packaging," he said.

Today, society demands more. And many cast a jaundiced eye.

PET is the most recovered plastic, but it still comes in with a U.S. recycling rate of less than 30 percent — far below other packaging materials such as steel, aluminum and paper. Even glass, with its inherent collection difficulties, is higher.

Lohia said the industry already has figured out how to effectively recycle PET, and that know-how will "drive growth."

"The reason for this is as clear as the bottles themselves. Consumers want sustainable packaging. They want recyclable packaging. The European authorities and government authorities are pushing for more and more recycled content. And global brands are also having ambitious targets for more recycled content in their packaging," he said. "This social, political and commercial focus on recyclability creates opportunity to enlarge our recycling investments."

Indorama, based in Bangkok, has put $1.5 billion on the table as the company's investment in PET recycling to meet the firm's 2025 goals.

As CEO of global recycling for Indorama, Srinivasan Prabhushankar said in a separate interview that the estimated cost to reach the 2030 goal of recycling 100 billion bottles annually is in the range of another $1.5 billion to $2 billion.

Indorama will look at new construction, expansion of existing facilities and acquisitions as part of the company's strategy to increase recycling.

"We will use any of the three, depending on the geographic of where we are," he said. "It is no one answer. It depends on the what the geography is."

Indorama will look at factors such as recycled PET bottle bale supply, recycled flake demand and labor availability when determining how to proceed.

In the United States, the company is currently content with its three recycling facilities but would consider additional moves if more states pass extended producer responsibility or bottle deposit legislation, Prabhushankar said.

"So far, we haven't seen any concrete moves that's going to push collection up," he said.

While Indorama is pushing hard into mechanical recycling of PET, the company also seeks to carve out a space in the chemical recycling business, currently working with three separate companies looking to commercialize their technologies, the recycling CEO said.

Both Prabhushankar and Lohia said mechanical and chemical recycling can complement one other in the push to increase PET recycling rates.

Despite the challenges plastics face these days, Lohia said he believes PET "will dominate the future of the packaging industry."

"Because PET is light, strong and uses less energy to make and transport compared to alternative materials, it can help make a better world," he said.

Replacing PET, he claimed, would increase waste, emissions and energy use.

While touting what he sees as PET's advantages, Lohia also cautioned use of the material must evolve.

"Consumers are looking for a more sustainable product now. People want an environmentally friendly product made in a sustainable way. This is the future of packaging, and we all here in this room have to face that," he said.