Authors: Nico Schmidt and Attila Kalman
On a sunny April afternoon, Markus Klatte climbs the ladder to the roof of his chemical recycling factory. At the top, he looks down on the industrial park in the west of Frankfurt, where Höchst AG once drove German plastics production. Today, Klatte wants his plant to deal with its legacy: the vast quantities of plastic that are still burned in incineration plants across Europe. For a few months now, Klatte’s company, Arcus Greencycling, has operated one of the first industrial-sized pyrolysis plants in Germany. The plant converts aluminium plastic into oil which is then sent to BASF Group to produce plastic again.