300,000 Tonnes of European Mechanical Plastic Recycling Capacity Closed in 2024, with Recycled Polyester Costing 2x Virgin

Mechanical plastic recycling facilities across Europe are shutting down at an unprecedented rate: 300,000 tonnes per year of capacity closed in 2024 alone — half of it in the UK and the Netherlands — with at least the same amount lost in 2025. For the first time, both the total volume of plastics entering recycling streams and recycled output decreased in Europe in 2024. This is happening despite EU mandates requiring all plastic packaging to be recyclable, reusable, or compostable by 2030. Why it matters: Virgin plastic prices have fallen due to cheap fossil fuel feedstocks and new petrochemical capacity in Asia and the Middle East, so recycled plastic pellets cost significantly more than virgin — recycled polyester is more than 2x the price of virgin polyester, so brand owners and manufacturers default to virgin plastic to protect margins, so demand for recycled feedstock collapses and recyclers cannot sell their output at break-even prices, so recycling facilities close and the infrastructure needed to meet the EU's 2030 packaging recyclability mandate disappears just when it should be scaling up. The structural root cause is that recycled plastic competes on price against virgin plastic whose production costs do not internalize environmental externalities, there is no binding minimum recycled content mandate with teeth in most jurisdictions (the EU's regulation does not take full effect until 2030), and global petrochemical overcapacity — especially from new plants in China and Saudi Arabia — has driven virgin resin prices to historic lows.