Shell will generate about 2.32 million tonnes of waste in 2026 (5.1 billion pounds) across the oil, gas, chemicals and fuel sites they operate, on our estimate from their own figures.
Roughly six tonnes in every ten come from one place, Shell's energy and chemicals park at Scotford in Alberta, Canada.
So how much waste does Shell produce? In 2025 Shell reported 2,390,000 tonnes at the sites they run, 10.2% less than in 2024, and sent 83% of it to disposal rather than recycling.
Shell's waste year by year (2021-2026)
Shell publish one total for the waste their operated sites generate each year, hazardous and non-hazardous together, whatever happens to it next. That is the figure in this table.
| Year | Waste generated | Change on the year before |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 2,284,000 tonnes | First year in the series |
| 2022 | 2,506,000 tonnes | +222,000 (+9.7%) |
| 2023 | 2,819,000 tonnes | +313,000 (+12.5%) |
| 2024 | 2,661,000 tonnes | -158,000 (-5.6%) |
| 2025 | 2,390,000 tonnes | -271,000 (-10.2%) |
| 2026 | 2,320,000 tonnes | -70,000 (-2.9%) |
Note: 2021 to 2025 are Shell's own figures for sites under their operational control, from Shell's Sustainability Data Supplement 2025.
2026 is our estimate, built as set out below, and the realistic range around it runs from about 2.15 to 2.69 million tonnes.
The series peaked in 2023 and has fallen 15.2% since. It is still 4.6% above 2021, so five years of reporting show a total that rises and falls rather than a steady cut.
How much of Shell's waste went to disposal
Shell split the total into waste that was reused, recycled or recovered, and waste "directed to disposal", which they also call non-recycled waste. The second group is by far the larger every year.
| Year | Sent to disposal | Share of all waste |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 1,928,000 tonnes | 84% |
| 2022 | 2,012,000 tonnes | 80% |
| 2023 | 2,251,000 tonnes | 80% |
| 2024 | 1,933,000 tonnes | 73% |
| 2025 | 1,987,000 tonnes | 83% |
| 2026 | 1,860,000 tonnes | 80% |
Note: Disposal means landfill, incineration without energy recovery, or another final treatment, as Shell define it. 2021 to 2025 are Shell's figures. 2026 applies their five-year average share of 80% to our 2026 estimate.
The best year was 2024, when 728,000 tonnes avoided disposal. In 2025 that fell to 403,000 tonnes while the amount sent to disposal rose by 54,000 tonnes.
How we estimated Shell's 2026 waste
Shell have not published a 2026 figure yet, so we moved their 2025 total on their own operating data for the first half of 2026. Because one site makes most of the waste, we moved it in two parts.
- Scotford process water. About 59% of the 2025 total, or 1,410,000 tonnes, moved with Shell's refinery processing intake, which slipped 1.2% to 1,243,000 barrels a day in the first half of 2026. That gives about 1,393,000 tonnes.
- The rest of Shell. The other 980,000 tonnes moved with oil and gas production available for sale, down 5.7% to 2,603,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day. That gives about 924,000 tonnes.
- The two together. 1,393,000 plus 924,000 is 2,317,000 tonnes, which we round to 2,320,000.
The range comes from the series itself. In a single year the total has moved by as much as 10.2% down and 12.5% up, and applying those swings to 2025 gives 2.15 to 2.69 million tonnes.
The driver data come from Shell's second quarter 2026 results, published on 30 July 2026.
Who are Shell?
Shell plc is a British energy company with activities in more than 70 countries. They produce oil and gas, liquefy and trade natural gas, refine crude, make chemicals and sell fuel, lubricants and electric vehicle charging. Their size in 2025 looked like this:
- Revenue: $266.9 billion, down from $284.3 billion in 2024
- Employees: 85,000 at the end of the year, against 96,000 a year earlier
- Fuel stations: more than 40,000 Shell-branded mobility sites in more than 80 markets
- Waste for every $1 million of revenue: about 9 tonnes, on the 2,390,000 tonne total
The fuel stations are what most people know. The waste mostly comes from drilling, refining and chemicals instead. Shell list drilling fluid and cuttings, contaminated soil, spent chemicals, brine water, bio-sludge and spent catalysts among their main waste streams.
Six tonnes in ten come from Shell's Scotford park
The Shell Energy and Chemicals Park Scotford in Alberta joins a refinery Shell own outright, with 100,000 barrels a day of crude distillation capacity, to a chemicals plant and to the Scotford upgrader, which processes bitumen from the Canadian oil sands.
Shell's 2025 report singles out the water this park disposes of. In a footnote to the waste table, they put the disposal of process water at Scotford at roughly:
- 59% of all waste Shell generated
- 76% of the hazardous waste they sent to disposal
- 70% of the non-hazardous waste they sent to disposal
- 71% of all non-recycled waste
That is about 1.41 million tonnes of process water. The 71% of non-recycled waste comes to almost the same amount, so practically none of the Scotford water is recycled. Nearly all of it goes to disposal.
Shell count it as waste because regulators class it as waste. Their method notes say the figures include liquid streams sent to a third-party facility or injected back underground on site, and leave out ordinary wastewater that is not classed as waste.
Scotford next to the rest of Shell
Splitting the 2025 total in two shows how different the rest of the company looks without the Scotford water.
| 2025 | Thousand tonnes generated / disposed |
|---|---|
| Scotford | 1,410 / 1,411 |
| Elsewhere | 980 / 576 |
| Total | 2,390 / 1,987 |
Note: Our split of Shell's 2025 figures. The Scotford row is the process water only, using the rounded shares (59% and 71%) Shell give for it. The two Scotford values come from separate shares, so they differ by 1,000 tonnes. Treat both rows as approximate.
Outside Scotford, 403,000 of the remaining 980,000 tonnes were reused, recycled or recovered. That is about 41%, against 17% for Shell as a whole.
Why the total moves with one plant's water
The year-to-year swings in Shell's waste are mostly a Scotford story. In their 2024 report, Shell put that year's drop in non-hazardous disposal down "primarily" to water treatment equipment at the Scotford upgrader returning to service after maintenance.
That is why a maintenance shutdown at one Canadian site can move Shell's global waste total by hundreds of thousands of tonnes. It is also why our 2026 range is wide.
Scotford stays inside the count in 2026. Shell swapped their last oil sands mining stake with Canadian Natural Resources in November 2025 and now own 20% of the upgrader, but they still run it, and operated sites are what the total measures.
Sites Shell run against everything Shell own
The 2,390,000 tonnes covers sites Shell operate, including joint ventures they run for partners. In their 2025 report Shell also estimated waste on a second boundary, their financial share of every asset they hold, whether they run it or not.
| 2025 (thousand tonnes) | Sites Shell run | Share owned |
|---|---|---|
| Generated | 2,390 | 3,239 |
| Hazardous | 606 | 822 |
| Disposed | 1,987 | 2,693 |
Note: "Share owned" is Shell's financial control boundary. Both columns from Shell's Annual Report and Accounts 2025. The financial share counts all subsidiaries plus Shell's share of joint operations, and leaves out joint ventures and associates.
On that wider count Shell's waste is 849,000 tonnes, or 35.5%, larger. It is an estimate rather than a measurement. Shell scaled the sites they do not run by the ratio between waste and Scope 1 emissions at the sites they do.
We lead with the operated figure because Shell measure it directly and have reported it the same way for five years.
Where Shell's waste ends up
Shell's 2025 table breaks the 2,390,000 tonnes down by route. We grouped the hazardous and non-hazardous lines together so each route appears once.
| Route (2025) | Thousand tonnes (share) |
|---|---|
| Other disposal | 1,492 (62.4%) |
| Landfill | 440 (18.4%) |
| Recycling | 264 (11.0%) |
| Other recovery | 102 (4.3%) |
| Incineration | 55 (2.3%) |
| Reuse | 36 (1.5%) |
Note: Our grouping of Shell's 2025 figures. "Other disposal" is Shell's term for chemical, physical or biological treatment as the final step.
"Other recovery" includes burning waste to make energy, "incineration" is burning without it, and "reuse" is Shell's preparation for reuse. Rows add to 2,389 thousand tonnes because of rounding.
Most of Shell's waste never reaches a landfill or an incinerator. The biggest route is "other disposal", and its non-hazardous part alone grew from 850,000 tonnes in 2024 to 1,110,000 in 2025.
Landfill is the clearer win. Non-hazardous waste sent to landfill fell from 538,000 tonnes in 2024 to 417,000 in 2025, a drop of 22%.
The recovered side shrank, though. Waste diverted from disposal fell from 728,000 tonnes in 2024 to 403,000 in 2025. Most of the drop was in preparation for reuse and in other recovery, the line that holds energy recovery.
Hazardous waste generated fell from 851,000 tonnes in 2024 to 606,000 in 2025. Of the 454,000 tonnes of it sent to disposal, 382,000 went to other disposal, 49,000 to incineration and 23,000 to landfill.
What Shell say about their waste and packaging
Shell's 2025 report states that they "have not set consolidated targets" for waste management. The one resource target they do have is about packaging, and it got narrower this year.
The packaging aim, and where it stood at the end of 2025, comes in three parts:
- Recycled plastic. Shell-branded plastic packaging held 21% recycled plastic by weight, up from 17% in 2024 and 10% in 2022. The aim is 30% by 2030.
- Reusable or recyclable by design. 99% of Lubricants packaging and 96% of Mobility packaging met this test, against 79% for Mobility in 2022. Shell retired this part on 1 January 2026, saying it had been consistently achieved.
- A smaller scope. From 2026 the recycled plastic aim covers car care products only on the Mobility side. Shell say other product areas made up under 0.5% of their branded packaging for Mobility and Lubricants.
Both aims cover primary packaging only, leaving out secondary and transport packaging. Measured against the 2.39 million tonnes of operational waste, the packaging they cover is a small slice of Shell's footprint.
What Shell are doing at their sites
Shell describe a site-by-site approach rather than a group target. Between 2021 and 2024 they completed 26 detailed waste assessments, and they have written twelve circularity strategies since 2024. Examples they give:
- In Malaysia, waste from drilling goes to make cement and lubricants instead of going to landfill.
- In the Gulf of America, unused chemicals go back to suppliers for reuse.
- At Deer Park in Texas, non-hazardous soil is recycled into construction material.
- At Norco in Louisiana, Shell have processed pyrolysis oil made from mixed plastic waste since 2019.
- At Moerdijk in the Netherlands, 2025 was the first full year of an upgrader that turns pyrolysis oil into chemical feedstock.
The plastics work is chemical recycling of other people's waste, not a cut in Shell's own. None of the examples comes with a tonnage, so their effect on the 2.39 million tonne total cannot be read from the report.
Frequently asked questions about Shell's waste
These are the questions people ask most about Shell's waste, answered from Shell's own reporting.
How much waste does Shell produce each year?
Shell generated 2,390,000 tonnes of waste at the sites they operate in 2025, down from 2,661,000 in 2024. On our estimate the 2026 total is about 2.32 million tonnes, within a range of roughly 2.15 to 2.69 million.
Why does one site make most of Shell's waste?
Disposal of process water at the Scotford park in Alberta made up about 59% of Shell's 2025 waste. Regulators class that water as waste, so a large liquid stream at one park outweighs everything else Shell report.
How much of Shell's waste is recycled?
In 2025, 403,000 tonnes of Shell's waste, or 17% of the total, was reused, recycled or recovered. The other 1,987,000 tonnes went to disposal. Without the Scotford process water, about 41% of the remaining waste avoided disposal.
Does Shell have a target to cut their waste?
No. Shell's 2025 report says they have not set consolidated targets for waste management. Their only resource target is about packaging, aiming for 30% recycled plastic in Shell-branded plastic packaging by 2030, against 21% at the end of 2025.
How much hazardous waste does Shell produce?
Shell generated 606,000 tonnes of hazardous waste at the sites they operate in 2025, down from 851,000 tonnes in 2024. Of that, 454,000 tonnes went to disposal and 152,000 tonnes was reused, recycled or recovered.
Does Shell count waste at sites they do not run?
Only as an estimate. Counting their financial share of every asset, Shell put 2025 waste at 3,239,000 tonnes, 35.5% more than at operated sites. Sites they do not run are scaled from those they do.
How do we estimate Shell's 2026 waste?
We split Shell's 2025 total into the Scotford process water and everything else. Each part moved with Shell's own first-half 2026 operating data, refinery intake and oil and gas production, which gives about 2.32 million tonnes.
Images: Nielsoncaetanosalmeron, Steven Lek
