At the recent Responsible Care® and Sustainability conference held in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the American Chemistry Council recognized Covestro LLC with a Product Safety Award for its Roadmap for Turning Hazardous Waste into New Products. This award marks the seventh time the company, a leading producer of high-performance polymers, has received the product safety award in recent years, further underlining the company’s commitment to safety.

Covestro’s Roadmap for Turning Hazardous Waste into New Products (Roadmap) establishes a formal process to identify, evaluate and implement projects designed to repurpose previously discarded hazardous waste streams in the production of new products. The Roadmap, which includes a series of well-defined checks and balances, including formal reviews of safety and regulatory frameworks, also supports the company’s vision for circularity by reusing waste to create new products.

“Covestro’s new Roadmap streamlines the regulatory process, making it easier to transition ideas for waste reuse into reality,” said Lisa Marie Nespoli, senior manager of product safety and stewardship. 

Through the use of the Roadmap, Covestro is able to identify and evaluate projects based on their viability and adherence to strict safety and regulatory criteria across three primary areas, which include:

• Identification of a customer or collaborator that will safely use the product as a substitute in its process;
• Evaluation of the new product and application to ensure it does not increase the hazard profile of the original material;
• Documentation of the application under the Environmental Protection Agency’s Recycling Legitimacy Criteria.

“Safety has always been a core tenet of our business,” said Haakan Jonsson, chairman and president of Covestro LLC. “This award shows our forward thinking, combining our commitment to safety with our vision to become fully circular. Preventing hazardous waste from being discarded and safely turning it into new products is a critical piece of the circular economy, and we now have a process to make it a reality.”

Covestro has already implemented several projects in the United States using the new Roadmap and intends to expand the program throughout the company. 

Find more information at www.covestro.us.