Versalis featured in the 2022 Responsible Care Awards Gallery: ‘striving for resource efficiency’
Versalis considers circular economy and sustainability as strategic drivers applied to processes and products throughout their life cycle. The company’s guidelines for circular economy approach are based on innovation and include new developments for recycling technologies of polymers and rubbers, feedstock diversification and eco-design for products and packaging.
Thanks to dedicated research projects and through the development of integrated technology platforms and partnerships with various players in the supply chain, Versalis is expanding its portfolio. Specifically, the Company developedits first range of products with different polymers base (polystyrene, polyethylene and elastomers) containing different percentages of recycled material from post-consumer plastics, mechanically recycled.
These recycled-contentproductswere realised to reduce the environmental impacts of plastics and rubber materials related to both their production cycle and to their end of life, thus making a tangible contribution to decarbonization targets, reducing emissions.
Related to polystyrene, Versalis has developed aspecificrecycled PSrange: the compact polystyrene-based compounds containing up to 75% recycled polystyrene from the advanced mechanical recycling of post-consumer plastics
In 2021, Versalis expanded the PS circular portfolio with a new product suitable for food packaging and made from 75% recycled polystyrene obtained from domestic waste collection. This product is the result of the existing collaboration with Forever Plast S.p.A. (a leading Italian company in the recycling of post-consumer products into high-quality raw materials) and has been developed as part of an intense collaborative project with various players in the entire Italian polystyrene industry value chain: Corepla (Italian Consortium for the Collection, Recycling and Recovery of Plastic Packaging), Pro Food (Association of Food Processors) and Unionplast (Plastic Rubber Federation). This collaboration has given rise to an innovative recyclable tray suitable for food and composed of recycled polystyrene, developed by the companies that are members of the Pro Food association.
The tray consists of an inner layer containing the Versalis product with 75% recycled polystyreneand two outer layers made from virgin polystyrene. This structure, known as the A-B-A functional barrier, ensures food contact compliance. The functional barrier design and stringent testing were developed in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute for Process Engineering and Packaging (IVV).
Thanks to the recycled content in Versalis material, the tray thus composed can contain up to 50% recycled polystyrene from domestic waste collection.
The Versalis product containing recycled PSis already used in Italy, France and Belgium and is, at the time being, mainly aimed at the meat and fish packaging market. The tray represents the first practical application of a Versalis recycled-contentproduct in the food sector.