Circular economy
As a key component of the circular economy, recycling is addressed by the Group from several angles:
- the use of recycled raw materials, whether sourced directly from the market or resulting from the recycling of end-of-life Arkema products collected on the market;
- the development of recycling technologies for the Group’s innovative materials in partnership with the relevant industrial sectors; and
- the contribution of Arkema customers to the circular economy by offering solutions that can be recycled within their own value chains.
Recycled raw materials and production of recycled polymers by the Group
In 2019, Arkema launched the Virtucycle® program in collaboration with Agiplast to develop loops for the collection and regeneration of high performance polymers while minimizing CO2 emissions.
Thanks to the acquisition of Agiplast in 2021, Arkema became the first fully integrated high performance polymer manufacturer offering both bio-based and recycled materials. The strong know-how acquired in mechanical recycling technologies will now enable Arkema to offer high quality recycled polymers to its customers.
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Developing technologies for recycling the Group’s materials
Arkema provides materials for applications in which recycling will become a key issue. Examples include the thermoplastic polymers (Elium®, Rilsan® Matrix) used to manufacture wind turbine blades and hydrogen tanks.
Through its proactive work on recycling capabilities, Arkema has demonstrated the feasibility of mechanically or chemically recycling scraps and end-of-life wind turbine blades made from Elium® thermoplastic resin.
Since it is chemically recyclable, the resin can be used over and over again while preserving the same properties as a virgin resin, making this technology a perfect fit for the circular economy.
Inside Materials:
Recycling of materials
Arkema’s contribution to the circular economy downstream of its products
Among the many solutions offered by the Group are Kercoat® and Opticoat® coatings, which allow glass bottles to be recycled, and Bostik® adhesive grades for the lamination of flexible food films, which can be mechanically recycled with other used packaging.
Bostik® SF10M: the first RecyClass-approved adhesive for recyclable PE packaging
Recycling of multilayer plastic films in foodstuff packaging is a major challenge where the choice of adhesive is a key factor: it must ensure the packaging is solid enough and protect the food, while maximizing the quality of the recycled output from the used packaging to enable reusability.
Bostik is highly active in sustainable flexible packaging technologies and has brought to market the pioneering SF10M, the first adhesive approved by the RecyClass protocol for the polyethylene packaging recycling sector in Europe.
Qualification tests have shown that up to 50% of the multilayer films obtained with Bostik® SF10M adhesive, once recycled and granulated, can be reused to produce new polyethylene films of very high quality.
