Ask outside the industry why circular chemistry has been slow to scale and the answer usually lands on technology, as though the recycling itself were lagging behind. Anyone who has tried to source automotive-grade recycled polypropylene at volume knows the constraint sits somewhere less convenient. The processing routes are mature enough; what is scarce is qualified feedstock, in the grades industry needs, at a price the market will bear. Europe has just written that scarcity into law.
A regulation that manufactures demand
In 2026 the EU adopted its End-of-Life Vehicle Regulation, introducing binding recycled-content rules for the first time. New vehicles must contain at least 15% recycled plastic within six years and 25% within ten, a fifth of it sourced specifically from scrapped vehicles. That closed-loop clause is the hard part: roughly 85% of a vehicle is already recovered by mass, yet most of its plastic is downcycled or burned, because automotive-grade recyclate is difficult to produce and harder to certify.
The problem is coordination, not capacity
More recycling lines will not close this gap alone. Recovering high-quality polypropylene from scrapped cars, keeping it clean enough for demanding applications and routing it back into vehicles rather than cheaper products is a value-chain problem, one that resolves only when OEMs, dismantlers, recyclers and compounders design the loop together. Efficiency at any single step tends to shift cost and risk elsewhere rather than remove it. When virgin resin cheapened through 2025, several brands quietly walked back recycled-content pledges, a reminder that willingness to pay is thinner than the commitments suggest.
Where the conversation goes next
These are the questions at the roundtable on bio-based and circular value chains at the Chemical Automation and Digitalisation Congress (AUTOMA Chem) 2026. Hendrik Rasch of Evonik sets out how recovering recycled polypropylene for automotive use depends on orchestrating the whole chain rather than perfecting one process. Miguel Perdigão Silva of Worley takes on the pricing puzzle, explaining that circular chains scale only when cost and risk are shared rather than pushed onto whoever is least able to refuse. Andree Blesgen, also of Evonik, brings the harder end of chemical recycling into view through polyurethane, where feed variability alone can undermine the economics before any commercial question arises.
The regulation has settled what Europe wants. What industry is still working out, and what this roundtable is built around, is who pays for it and how the chain holds together long enough to deliver.