There is a growing emphasis on sustainable, environmentally friendly materials in the marketplace, and Trinseo is meeting this demand directly with its ECO Series materials.
This is a portfolio of PC and PC/ABS resins that contain recycled content.
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Trinseo offers recycled content resin solutions
With its ECO Series, Trinseo has mastered the process of combining virgin and recycled content to achieve the exact properties needed for an application, and can create a material with up to 95 per cent recycled content. This includes ultra-bright white and transparent options — both difficult to achieve with material other than virgin content.
Since Trinseo started developing recycled content materials over a decade ago, the research teams have overcome numerous challenges such as recycled feedstock availability and quality, reliable sourcing, and ways to balance material performance properties.
They also found that some applications are appropriate for recycled content and some are not. For example, industries that are highly regulated or have strict requirements have limitations due to the variability in recycled resin content and the potential impact on material performance properties. In medical applications, for example, where biocompatibility is a strict requirement for patient-tissue contact applications, recycled material is not acceptable; in automotive applications that provide structural support, recycled material may not be possible if there’s an impact on mechanical properties that would affect safety.
A common misperception is that material with recycled content is less costly. There are several additional and more complex steps involved, however, including additional development time, additional cleaning and processing, and added quality control.
Furthermore, Trinseo recently engaged ‘thinkstep’, a sustainability consulting, software and data organisation, to perform LCAs on its EMERGETM ECO PC and PC/ABS grades compared to virgin materials. Parameters evaluated were the difference in CO2 emissions, and the difference in water and energy consumption. In all cases, Trinseo ECO resins had a significantly reduced environmental impact.
Trinseo’s first ECO grade materials utilised PCR content, then the company began incorporating PIR content too. Unlike PCR, which touches the consumer, PIR is waste generated during the production process. One precondition for a material to qualify as PIR is that it must leave its original place of production, otherwise it receives a different classification.