Material Circularity: Principle No. 2 for Building a Circular Economy - Seite 3

One advantage of Eastman molecular recycling is that it recycles a wide range of materials that cannot be mechanically recycled. These technologies provide a means to recycle not just more plastic but more types of plastic - meaning less ends up in landfills.

This is the promise of molecular recycling. The challenge is that we don't have a clear and consistent approach to collecting and recycling more plastics. To activate material circularity through molecular recycling, we need to aggressively pursue:

• Design for recyclability
• Improved access to recycling for a majority of households
• Infrastructure for collecting and sorting waste and transporting it to proper recycling facilities
• Molecular recycling facilities that operate at scale
• Policies that enable the development of effective recycling technologies

What's Eastman doing for a circular economy?

We're working closely with waste management companies to create new feedstock streams. We're also supporting take-back programs and collection efforts. That includes The Recycling Partnership's PET Recycling Coalition, which offers grants to fund viable research, infrastructure and knowledge sharing to help capture more PET waste for recycling. We're engaging in meaningful partnerships that are critical for scaling the circular economy.

Beyond that, we're making significant investments in facilities that can implement molecular recycling and turn hard-to-recycle plastic waste into feedstock for new materials and products.

We've developed two technologies that can greatly expand plastic recycling: polyester renewal technology (PRT) and carbon renewal technology (CRT). These technologies complement mechanical recycling by accepting a wider range of plastics like those prevalent in plastic packaging, other single-use plastics, textiles and more. Our PRT facility in Kingsport, Tennessee, is nearing completion, and we're targeting the facility to be operational by the end of 2023. It will be one of the largest material-to-material recycling facilities in the world, processing 110,000 metric tonnes of polyester waste annually and producing high-quality, new products that perform just like virgin materials.