At K 2010 SABIC Innovative Plastics Reaffirms Environmental Commitment with Expanded Sustainability Portfolio and New Verification Program

At K 2010, in Hall 6, Stand D42, SABIC Innovative Plastics is reaffirming its commitment to the environment with two new announcements:  the expansion of its already extensive Sustainability Solutions Portfolio comprised of more than 20 sustainability solution families and hundreds of product grades such as new Noryl*, Cycoloy* and Lexan* EXL resins containing post-consumer recycled (PCR) content; and the introduction of a rigorous new validation process for sustainable materials and applications. The new process includes a Sustainable Product Scorecard, developed in partnership with respected, third-party environmental sustainability consulting firm, GreenOrder. Both announcements illustrate SABIC Innovative Plastics’ commitment to addressing its customers’ diverse environmental needs. This includes the company’s ongoing investments in materials, technologies and processes that help customers worldwide lower their carbon and energy footprints, eliminate waste, and ensure strict compliance with global environmental regulations.

“As an innovator in the development of sustainable technologies, SABIC Innovative Plastics is committed to creating and providing a steady supply of environmentally responsible materials,” said Tom Stanley, vice president, Technology, SABIC Innovative Plastics. “We’ve strengthened our portfolio to help customers across all industries meet demands for ever-greener products that comply with worldwide environmental expectations, and we’ve implemented a standards-based process for verifying our sustainability claims. This is an ongoing initiative that will continuously deliver new materials, process and application technologies that provide outstanding performance, as well as reduced impact on the planet.”

Broad and Deep Offering for Sustainable Design and Production

SABIC Innovative Plastics’ new PCR resins are just the latest additions to its broad array of sustainability solutions. Materials in the portfolio also include longstanding environmental successes such as Noryl GTX* resin for tough automotive exteriors and Valox iQ* and Xenoy iQ* resins based on up-cycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET).

Further, the company provides many other specialty resins and services that are not explicitly part of the Sustainability Solutions Portfolio, but can help customers design and manufacture products with a reduced ecological impact. Examples include materials for energy-efficient lighting (light emitting diodes (LEDs) and compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs)), thin-wall designs to reduce resource consumption, computer-aided design (CAD) optimization for more-productive use of materials, coating reduction and paint elimination to avoid volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions, and improved molding process efficiency to reduce energy usage.

Sustainability Solutions Portfolio Targets Top Environmental Issues

The SABIC Innovative Plastics Sustainability Solutions portfolio is comprised of materials that address today’s most important environmental initiatives:

1. Post-consumer recycled content:  SABIC Innovative Plastics has received high praise for its Valox iQ and Xenoy iQ resins, including the 2009 Responsible Care award from Cefic and the 2007 environmental award from the Society of Plastics Engineers (SPE). These materials, containing up to 60 percent post-consumer content derived from  discarded PET bottles, consume less energy and yield less carbon dioxide (CO2 ) than traditional polybutylene terephthalate (PBT) or polyamide (PA) 6 throughout the entire manufacturing process – from cradle (discarded PET bottles) to gate (resin pellets). The company recently launched Lexan EXL PCR resins for consumer electronics applications, which reduce energy and emissions by up to 60 percent compared to conventional Lexan EXL resins.
2. Automotive weight-out:  SABIC Innovative Plastics has led the industry for many years with lightweight materials that reduce fuel consumption and emissions while delivering high performance and improved design flexibility. Collectively, automotive body panels molded from Noryl GTX resin; Lexan polycarbonate (PC) glazing; Xenoy iQ resin in pedestrian protection systems; SABIC® Stamax® long glass-filled polypropylene (LGFPP) for front-end module assemblies; and Flexible Noryl resin for ultra-thin-wall wire coating may reduce the weight of a typical car by more than 24 kg. This average weight savings results in a carbon emissions reduction of approximately 20 to 45 percent during the entire life cycle of a car compared to incumbent technologies. For example, for a typical car, this weight reduction could lower CO2 emissions per kilometer traveled by approximately 2.4 g. Successful adaptation of these lightweight technologies to a European fleet of approximately 210 million vehicles could potentially avoid 9.7 million tons of CO2 emissions per year.
3. Advanced flame retardance (FR):  SABIC Innovative Plastics is continuing to expand its array of non-halogenated FR plastics to keep pace with evolving environmental regulations and voluntary eco labels that are important to customers. For example, the company’s new halogen-free FR Lexan PC resin series combines transparency and all the benefits of an FR PC with chemically halogen-free formulation.
4. Energy efficiency:  Energy efficiency is an important focus for SABIC Innovative Plastics. For example, its Specialty Film and Sheet business provides high-performance glazing and roofing materials for the building and construction industry that can reduce energy usage. Thermoclear* Solar Control infrared (IR) multiwall sheet products, which combine highly insulating multiwall construction with a proprietary IR coating, have been shown to reduce indoor cooling and heating energy requirements by 7 to 25 percent compared with double-pane glass windows and skylights, depending on multiwall thicknesses between 16 mm and 25 mm.

Sustainable Product Scorecard Validates Claims

Products and applications in SABIC Innovative Plastics’ expanded Sustainability Solutions Portfolio have been strictly validated in two potential ways:  either they meet one or more widely recognized third-party sustainability standards or their environmental benefits relative to incumbent technologies have been verified using the company’s new Sustainable Product Scorecard. For a significant number of products in the portfolio, third-party standards exist defining sustainability features, such as halogen-free FR or PCR content. For a number of other solutions, such as automotive lightweight design or footprint reductions, there are no widely recognized industry or third-party standards defining sustainability. For these solutions, it is necessary to verify the environmental benefits over incumbent alternatives using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methods for estimating the environmental footprint of products and processes. SABIC Innovative Plastics incorporated these LCA methods into its new Sustainable Product Scorecard to ensure that the verification process is done in a rigorous and credible way.

The scorecard process has already verified the environmental benefits of seven sustainability solution families, with more in the pipeline. This portfolio validation process enables customers to confidently choose high-performance materials that advance their environmental and business goals. SABIC Innovative Plastics plans to further expand its list of verified materials and sustainability portfolio through the end of 2010 and into the future to further support customers’ environmental objectives.

The Sustainable Product Scorecard measures, validates and communicates environmental benefits compared with conventional or alternative materials. The scorecard has two components:

1. Life Cycle Assessment:  LCA and Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) methodologies, based on the ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 standards, are used to build the first component of the scorecard. Carbon and energy footprints1 of products or applications are estimated through the product’s life cycle.
2. Green Chemistry Screen (GCS):  This tool assesses the chemical composition of the product, including known impurities, byproducts and catalysts, against well-established toxicological, regulatory and standard-specific criteria.

The results of the scorecard are used to develop environmental benefit claims that are subjected to a rigorous, independent review by GreenOrder. These validated claims, summarized in an Environmental Product Data Sheet (EPDS), allow customers to differentiate their products and showcase their sustainability initiatives.

“We commend SABIC Innovative Plastics for its proactive efforts to provide new alternatives to traditional materials across the spectrum of sustainability,” said Truman Semans, principal at GreenOrder, an LRN Company. “The key to this initiative is the verification of environmental benefits using established standards and rigorous validation and testing processes. Our work in independently evaluating SABIC Innovative Plastics’ materials helps ensure that they fulfill their eco claims and deliver proven, measurable value to customers.”

For additional information on SABIC Innovative Plastics’ Sustainability Solutions portfolio, please go to www.sabic-ip.com. For technical product inquiries, please contact us at www.sabic-ip.com/prtechinquiry.

SABIC is Exhibiting at K 2010 in Düsseldorf, Germany in Hall 6, Stand D42

For K 2010, SABIC’s focus is A Culture of Innovation, which means investing in Growth, Technology, Sustainability and Customer Focus. We help our customers to innovate, differentiate their applications and optimize costs by:

• Investing in global expansion;
• Providing the broadest product portfolio that delivers better performance and adds value;
• Developing environmentally responsible products and solutions that provide significant and measurable performance advantages; and
• Working closely with our customers to build long-term, lasting relationships.

About SABIC Innovative Plastics

SABIC Innovative Plastics is a leading, global supplier of engineering thermoplastics with a 75-year history of breakthrough solutions that solve its customers’ most pressing challenges. Today, SABIC Innovative Plastics is a multi-billion-dollar company with operations in more than 35 countries and approximately 9,000 employees worldwide. The company continues to lead the plastics industry with customer collaboration and continued investments in new polymer technologies, global application development, process technologies, and environmentally responsible solutions that serve diverse markets such as automotive, electronics, building & construction, transportation, and healthcare. The company’s extensive product portfolio includes thermoplastic resins, coatings, specialty compounds, film, and sheet. SABIC Innovative Plastics (www.sabic-ip.com) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC), one of the world’s top six petrochemicals manufacturers.