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New joint venture to tackle polystyrene recycling

| By Mary Bailey

AmSty (The Woodlands, Tex.; www.amsty.com), a joint venture equally owned by Chevron Phillips Chemical Company LP and Trinseo LLC, and Agilyx (Tigard, Oregon; www.agilyx.com) have formed a joint venture, Regenyx LLC, dedicated to fully recycling post-consumer polystyrene materials back to new polystyrene products. Regenyx will utilize Agilyx’s chemical recycling process to convert used polystyrene products back to their original liquid form, styrene monomer. AmSty can then take that styrene monomer and work with its supply chain partners to make new polystyrene products with a favorable environmental profile without any degradation of quality or value. This form of circular recycling is known as the PolyUsable process.

Regenyx will assume the assets of Agilyx’s Tigard, Oregon, facility, which is currently scaled at 10 tons per day and already shipping recycled styrene monomer to AmSty. In addition, AmSty and Agilyx will work together to develop plans for a larger regional facility scaled to 50 tons per day, currently envisioned for the West Coast.

“We are excited to take this step forward with Agilyx toward a new future for plastics recycling,” said Brad Crocker, President and Chief Executive Officer of AmSty. “Polystyrene products like foam cups, foam packaging and single-use picnic items are uniquely suitable for conversion back to chemical building blocks that can be used to make new products over and over. We are committed to a future where discarded polystyrene materials are no longer sent to landfills. This approach also holds great promise for other types of plastics as well.”

Joe Vaillancourt, CEO of Agilyx, commented, “Today’s announcement marks a major milestone, not only for AmSty and Agilyx, but for our collective ability to dramatically increase recycling rates. Our collaboration with AmSty brings together a complete system that will allow us to continually recycle polystyrene products back to polystyrene products. Agilyx has been driven for the last 15 years with a vision to end wasteful outcomes of post-consumer plastics, and we are very excited to be partnering with AmSty to help drive innovations that will give perpetual use to polystyrene.”