Recycling: PureCycle on fast track approval for PP recycling plant in Thailand; Woosh/Borouge and BlueAlp recycle diaper plastics

US-based recycler PureCycle Technologies says that its wholly-owned Thailand subsidiary, PureCycle (Thailand) Company Limited, has been admitted to the Thailand FastPass Investment Acceleration Program by the Board of Investment (BOI) of Thailand. The selection covers PureCycle’s planned PP recycling facility in Rayong, Thailand and provides facilitated access to the approval and permitting processes required to commence business operations. This follows the BOI of Thailand’s recent approval of PureCycle’s investment in the project earlier this month.

The planned Thai facility will be constructed at Thailand-based integrated petroleum and petrochemical company IRPC’s eco-industrial zone in Rayong. PureCycle’s Thai facility is a central component of the company’s growth roadmap toward 1 billion pounds of installed PP recycling capability by 2030. Thailand combines advantaged feedstock supply, regional offtake demand across Southeast Asia, and a supportive policy environment for advanced manufacturing.

The Thailand FastPass certificate, issued under Project No. E682982, is valid from May 6, 2026 through December 31, 2028. The program is reserved for large-scale investments in strategic industries that utilize advanced technology and are expected to generate substantial economic benefits for Thailand.

Under the program, PureCycle will receive coordinated facilitation across the approval and permit processes needed to launch operations from the Thai government agencies that have executed Memoranda of Understanding and Service Level Agreements with the BOI. The framework is designed to compress the timeline between investment commitment and the start of operations.

PureCycle CEO Dustin Olson said, “Being selected for Thailand FastPass is a meaningful endorsement from the Thai government of the scale, strategic value and technology of what we are building in Thailand. We thank the Board of Investment and Secretary General Narit Therdsteerasukdi for their diligence in this effort. This acceleration framework lets us advance our Thailand facility on a faster timeline while working closely with the Thai agencies whose approvals matter most to getting steel in the ground.”

To maintain Thailand FastPass status, the program requires the project to achieve an investment of no less than 20% of the total investment value stated in PureCycle’s application within six months of receiving the certificate. Based on the company’s current project plan, PureCycle considers its existing investments sufficient to meet that threshold.

Meanwhile, with disposable baby diapers being one of the examples of the linear economy since they are typically used once and sent to incineration or landfill with no material recovery, Woosh, a Belgium-based circular diaper brand, polyolefin solutions provider Borouge and recycler BlueAlp have collaborated to close the loop on diaper plastics.

Together, the companies have demonstrated that plastics from used baby diapers can be recovered and chemically recycled into feedstock for new polymers. This marks the first time this circular loop has been demonstrated at industrial scale in Europe, opening a scalable pathway for one of the continent’s most challenging waste streams, the firms add.

Based on consumption data, Cabrera and Garcia (2019) estimated that 6.73 million tonnes of disposable baby diapers were generated in the EU‑28 in 2017, highlighting the scale of this largely unrecovered waste stream across Europe.

The achievement builds on Woosh’s closed-loop ecosystem for diapers. At its core is the Woosh give-back diaper, which is optimised for recycling. Woosh supplies these diapers to childcare facilities and households and collects them again after use, creating a separate, traceable stream of used diapers for recycling.

This dedicated waste stream forms the basis for further processing. Borouge International and BlueAlp worked with Woosh engineers to define the quality requirements the recovered plastic needed to meet to be used as input for BlueAlp’s chemical recycling technology.

Woosh then optimized their proprietary mechanical separation process to produce plastic fractions that meet these requirements.

The first industrial scale recycling runs were carried out at BlueAlp’s plant in Oostende, Belgium. The recovered plastic fractions were processed using BlueAlp’s pyrolysis technology, which converts them into a liquid hydrocarbon known as pyrolysis oil. This pyrolysis oil is ISCC Plus-certified and meets the required quality specifications for further processing into new polymers, including those suitable for new diaper production.

Woosh is already scaling its model. The company currently supplies and collects diapers across Belgium, with over 30,000 children using the Woosh give-back diaper system each day. Its diaper recycling plant, launched in 2025, processes thousands of tonnes of used diapers per year. In the near future, its operations are set to expand into France and the Netherlands, increasing the volume of recovered plastic available for recycling.

The broader significance is clear. Across Europe, large volumes of absorbent hygiene products still follow a linear path to incineration or landfill.

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