MINERAL FILLERS | ADDITIVES
Reducing cost and carbon
Minerals act as polymer substitutes to reduce cost and carbon footprint along with providing functional benefits. Jennifer Markarian reports on new products
There has been much recent work on renewable and plant-based fillers for thermoplastic com- pounds (as discussed in the Compounding World May issue), but mineral fillers also offer benefits for reducing the carbon footprint of the compound and the end-use product. Suppliers are undertak- ing life cycle assessments (LCAs) as well as seeking to optimise their processes to reduce environmen- tal impact in mining, purifying, milling and trans- porting, for example. Calcium carbonate has a long history as a
lower-cost filler in thermoplastics, but it is seeing a revival as a part of plastics’ sustainability story as a lower-carbon footprint replacement for petrochem- ical-based polymers. Heritage Plastics, headquartered in Mississippi,
US, has been a proponent of calcium carbonate concentrates for thermoplastics for more than 40 years. “Achieving sustainability will require many different solutions, and the use of calcium carbon- ate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is one of them,” says Heritage Plastics Director of Technical
www.compoundingworld.com
Services and Development, Jason Riggs. The company’s first LCA of its product was conducted in 2008, and has recently been updated by a third-party consultancy, YellowYellow, based in Toronto, Canada. The 2023 LCA showed that each kilogram of Heritage Plastics HM10-type concen- trate results in a 56% reduction in emissions compared to each kilogram of traditional LLDPE production. Carbon dioxide (CO2
) emissions were calculated
based on the manufacturing of three products in the HM10 minerals concentrate line (HM10 Max, HM10LC, and the HM10S Series), to arrive at an empirical value for the entire cradle-to-gate process. Each of the three products emitted 645 kgCO2
an average of 1,472 kgCO2
Main image: Okeanos has developed QR code technol- ogy which tracks the journey of calcium carbonate used in packaging from “ground to grocery”
/tonne of product in 2023. LLDPE produces /tonne.
“The LCA was rigorous in its analysis of our three flagship products,” says Riggs. “It considered emissions from both the constituent, turn-key components, and those resulting from the manu- facturing operation at our plant in Sylacauga.”
� June 2024 | COMPOUNDING WORLD 41
IMAGE: OKEANOS
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