Elimination of Plastic Waste

Elimination of
plastic waste

Our ambition is to be a leader in recycling in the Americas and a company that’s developing the recycling supply chain where we operate. Our transition to a circular economy is deeply rooted in mechanical and advanced recycling solutions. We continue to act in partnership with other members of the value chain to strengthen mechanical recycling and overcome barriers and ensure the increased production of high-quality recycled material. We also continue to work on improving technologies and solutions for advanced recycling, that is, the transformation of plastic waste into the base chemical building blocks for manufacturing new plastic products.

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Our ambition

To be a leader

in recycling in the Americas

and a company that develops the

recycling supply chain

where we operate.

Our goals

Expand our I’m green™ portfolio to include

300,000 tons of thermoplastic resins

and chemicals with recycled content by 2025;

and grow to
1 million tons

of thermoplastic resins and chemicals with recycled content by 2030.

Our performance

Our transition strategy to a circular economy is deeply rooted in mechanical and advanced recycling solutions. We continue to work in partnership with others in our value chain to strengthen mechanical recycling and overcome economic, technical and logistical barriers to ensure increased production of high-quality recycled material. We also continue to work on improving technologies and solutions for advanced recycling, that is, the transformation of plastic waste into the base chemical building blocks for manufacturing new plastic products.

CIRCULAR ECONOMY STRATEGY

Projects

OPERATION CLEAN SWEEP

Since 2018, we have become members of the Operation Clean Sweep program, and we are committed to adopting the best practices in the control of pellets, flakes, and dust in all our industrial units. Our goal was to become a member of OCS blue - the highest level of participation in the program by 2020, and we were able to achieve this goal both in Brazil and in the United States. In all, the actions of the Zero Pellet Program, along with the other pellet containment actions, contributed to collecting approximately 2,000 tons of pellets, flakes and powders, preventing them from reaching rivers and seas.

TECIPAR

In 2020, we signed an agreement with the environmental engineering company Tecipar, through which we created a screening plant for separation of solid and organic waste collected in the public collection of the municipalities of São Paulo in Barueri and Santana de Parnaíba. The screened plastic will be directed to a Braskem recycling partner and the recycled resins will become raw material for new plastic products. It is expected that the project will prevent two thousand tons of plastic waste being thrown in a landfill in Santana do Parnaíba every year. This total is equivalent to approximately 36 million plastic packaging.

VALOREN

In partnership with Valoren, together we will build a recycling line and expand our portfolio of post-consumer resins in Indaiatuba (SP). We will invest BRL 67 million in the construction of a recycling line with the capacity to transform 250 million packages into 14,000 tons of high-quality post-consumer resin per year. Operations are expected to start in the fourth quarter of 2021.

Design for Environment

Meeting the growing demands of sustainability and circularity of society requires much more than the use of recycled materials. We need to fundamentally rethink the entire product, from extraction of resources and production of materials to the consumer experience. That’s what Braskem proposes: we combine our polymer expertise and transformation processes with consumer knowledge of brand owners to deliver an incredible experience with the lowest environmental impact possible. Aiming more sustainable and circular packaging, we have developed a design for environment methodology that uses lifecycle analysis to identify environmental hotspots throughout the product lifecycle. From this scientifically identified gap, the next step is to explore the consumer universe and its journey, maximizing attractiveness and usability. The ideation/prototyping/testing loop is repeated until we can combine sustainability, circularity and consumer experience into a single product.

ENCINA

In the United States, Braskem entered into a partnership with Encina, a leading provider of solutions for the production of renewable chemicals, to develop a long-term supply agreement that enables the production of certified circular PP (polypropylene). Encina’s technology is capable of producing renewable chemicals made of post-consumer plastic and the company aims to inaugurate a new facility in 2023.

Polypropylene Recycling Coalition

In the United States, Braskem became a founding member of the Polypropylene Recycling Coalition, which focuses on growing household access to PP recycling and ensuring that PP material is widely recovered and recycled - targeting end markets such as food and beverage packaging, consumer products and automotive parts.

Alcamare

In Mexico, Braskem Idesa partnered with Alcamare, the region’s largest recycler, for PE and PP recycling. Products with recycled plastic are already being produced, and the companies are working together to develop a food-contact approved recycled grade in 2022.

LEARN MORE ABOUT OUR CIRCULAR ECONOMY INITIATIVES HERE