Views: 0 Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2026-10-30 Origin: Site
If plastic wrap were used to wrap the entire Earth, how much plastic would be needed? The latest UN data show that global plastic consumption in 2025 is estimated to exceed 500 million tonnes, of which more than 400 million tonnes become waste. If these waste plastics were pressed into a film 1 mm thick, it could wrap the entire Earth’s surface more than twice, while only about 7%–9% of plastics are recycled; the remaining disposal routes are nothing more than landfill, incineration, and leakage into the environment. By 2060, global annual consumption of plastic products may climb to about 1.2 billion tonnes; in addition to visible plastic products, microplastics have even appeared in human arteries, lungs, brain, and breast milk;
At present, mainstream physical recycling (mechanical recycling) reprocesses waste plastics into products through methods such as melting and granulation. It is low in cost and mature in process, but it places extremely high requirements on raw material purity, and material performance declines after multiple processing cycles.
However, the highest proportion of plastic waste is precisely low-value materials such as flexible packaging and film bags—according to statistics, low-value waste plastics such as flexible packaging and film bags account for about 46% of plastic output. Chemical recycling was born precisely to fill this blind spot. Through pyrolysis, depolymerization, gasification, and other methods, it breaks waste plastics down to the molecular level, producing basic chemical raw materials such as monomers, pyrolysis oil, or syngas. It can handle mixed and contaminated waste plastics and achieve molecular-level “plastic-to-plastic” recycling.
Among the various technical routes of chemical recycling, pyrolysis is currently the most industrialized and most widely adaptable method. Plastics originally come from petroleum, and pyrolysis turns them back into oil—that is, pyrolysis of plastics into fuel.
A study by the authoritative institution Lux Research points out that the actual capacity of newly built global pyrolysis projects is generally lower than the designed capacity. The root cause is that most technology suppliers’ solutions remain at the experimental and pilot stages, and their equipment cannot meet the requirements of industrial-grade continuous pyrolysis.
In this field, Chinese companies have already moved to the front ranks. Niutech has focused on pyrolysis technology for nearly 40 years and is a technology group integrating technology R&D and application, high-end equipment manufacturing and sales, and independent industrial project construction and operation. Its technical pathway has achieved industrial-grade continuous and stable operation of pyrolysis equipment.
Niutech’s core technological achievement, “Complete Technology and Equipment for Resource Utilization of Industrial Continuous Low-Temperature Pyrolysis of Waste Rubber and Waste Plastics,” won the National Science and Technology Progress Award; the company has accumulated more than 130 domestic and international intellectual property rights. Its production line is suitable for single or mixed plastics such as PP, PE, and PS, and requires no special treatment such as sorting, cleaning, or dewatering. It can directly process the most difficult low-value, mixed, and contaminated waste plastics—including marine waste plastics, medical waste plastics, and waste textiles (PP/PE/PS/ABS, nylon, etc.)—and output stable-quality recycled oil, solid fuel, and non-condensable combustible gas, thereby building a complete waste-to-energy solution on this basis.
The recycled oil produced by Niutech equipment, after deep processing, can be used as chemical raw material for producing new plastics, completing the circular closed loop of “from petroleum and back to petroleum” and “waste plastic to new plastic.”
In terms of project validation, Niutech’s complete pyrolysis equipment has been validated in multiple 10,000-ton-level continuous plastic pyrolysis demonstration projects in Denmark, the UK, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, and China itself, and has helped customers complete 10,000-ton-level commercial project construction in dozens of countries worldwide.
The essence of white pollution is the inevitable product of the linear economic model—extract, make, discard. To solve it requires not only the awareness to “use less,” but also the technological infrastructure to “fully extract and utilize every last bit.” At present, more than 75 countries worldwide have introduced mandatory recycled content standards, and more than 50 countries and regions have implemented extended producer responsibility systems. Under stricter regulation, pyrolysis oil produced by chemical recycling is gaining stable downstream outlets.
The global plastic chemical recycling market is expected to exceed USD 20 billion in 2025, with China contributing more than 35%; the value of waste plastic recycling has exceeded RMB 110 billion. More importantly, there is a structural shift on the demand side: more than 60% of major global FMCG companies have set clear post-consumer recycled content targets, and some targets require the proportion of recycled material in packaging to reach 50% by 2030.
From physical recycling to chemical recycling, from waste plastic to pyrolysis oil, the technical logic of this path is already clear, and industrial validation has already landed in dozens of countries worldwide. In this track, Chinese equipment companies represented by Niutech are turning “continuous pyrolysis” into an industrial production line that can be replicated, exported, and support the closed loop of the circular economy.
