As a global supplier of building blocks for manufacturer’s products, Rohm and Haas has been a cog in the great wheels of international manufacturing for a century. If our promises are going to have meaningful impact, they will have to link up with the actions of every other company in the value chain, involving suppliers, customers and end-users to face up to the sustainability challenge and make it a catalyst for innovation.

Creating a strategy for sustainable PVC solutions All of this requires an overarching sustainability strategy, especially in the face of ongoing environmental and social concerns about some of the industries to which we are a major supplier, for example, the polyvinyl chloride [PVC] industry.

PVC is the third most widely used polymer in the world, and one of the most versatile products of the chemical industry. As a building material, products made from PVC are cheap, durable, and easy to assemble. The world PVC market has grown in volume and expanded into a large number of market sectors, from industrial and domestic piping, and window frames, to cable insulation and packaging.

But along with this growth has been a rising unease about its toxicity and overall environmental and social impact. In recent years, pressure has been gathering behind movements to ban its use in toys, car interiors, flooring and healthcare products. Finding appropriate uses, recognising the different sustainability concerns for rigid or soft PVC, and improving the attributes of materials is therefore critical to sustainable PVC solutions.

Rohm and Haas is a key supplier to this industry, producing impact modifiers, processing aids and heat stabilizers that are an integral part of the manufacturing process. No PVC products can currently exist without heat stabilizers. We have been providing them to the European PVC industry for many years based on the heavy metal tin, but more recently, we have developed a new organic based and heavy metal-free technology, under the name Advapak™ NEO, which would replace heavy metal-based stabilizer systems.

Clarifying the Sustainability Challenges In 2000 in response to social and environmental concerns in the UK market about PVC, Hydro Polymers, then the fourth largest polyvinyl chloride (PVC) manufacturer in Europe sought help from The Natural Step (TNS) an international not-for-profit organization dedicated to sustainability.  With the backing of the English Environment Agency, TNS initiated a full gap analysis asking the question “Does PVC have a place in a sustainable society?” The study engaged stakeholders in the manufacturing chain, end-users, regulators and NGO’s.

The outcome was a report evaluating PVC against The Natural Step four System Conditions that define sustainability. The report defined five major challenges in order for PVC to become a sustainable material; energy emissions reductions towards carbon neutrality, manufacturing and end-of-life recycling, eliminating toxic by-products, substituting toxic additives, and securing an industry-wide commitment to a long term transformation process.

Hydro Polymers seized the opportunity to act on these challenges. In 2004 they invited their ten most important suppliers in their value chain in Europe to come up with solutions for the sustainability of PVC.

Opportunities arising from the Sustainability Challenges  In 2007 Rohm and Haas worked with TNS and it’s Sustainability Life Cycle Assessment [SLCA] tool for assessing product sustainability. The SLCA provides a strategic overview of the full scope of social and ecological sustainability to enable designers and decision makers to focus upon the sustainable development potential of the product and thereby ‘design out’ unsustainable aspects throughout the whole life cycle. A cross functional Rohm and Haas working team was created, led by Muriel Hebrard – stabilizers project manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa [EMEA] – gathering people from functions such as marketing, R&D, operations, Environment Health & Safety [EH&S] and regulatory affairs. Although the team was already aware of some obvious environmental benefits of the heavy metal free stabilizer technology, they wanted to get a holistic and robust evaluation of Advapak™ NEO for use in rigid PVC. Running this SLCA would prove to PVC manufacturers that their Advapak™ NEO solution was a major step toward sustainability all along the vinyl value chain.

Louis Sederel, Rohm and Haas European Laboratories - and EMEA EH&S Director, presented the methodology and the outcomes of the SLCA during the PVC2008 conference in Brighton, UK. The Advapak™ NEO heat stabilizers were able, recalled Sederel, “to provide significant progress towards sustainability mainly by reducing the usage of heavy metals and other scarce mined materials. ”Compared to other technologies, the new stabilizers increased the usage of renewable raw materials, reduced energy consumption and emissions by simplifying the manufacturing process, and enabled easier recycling.”

Just as importantly, the “sustainable” stabilizers were shown by the SLCA team to constitute a “flexible platform”, stimulating additional progress towards sustainability which could rapidly be made through selection of vegetal-based raw materials from sustainably managed sources with local production, reducing transportation-related environmental impacts. It also became clear from the work of the SLCA team that their technology was only part of the sustainability assessment. It led to a holistic “extended enterprise” approach to consider the sustainability performance “not only in our own organization, but in the whole value chain of the products we provide to the Vinyl Industry.” They noted that “The ‘whole picture’, i.e. the impact through the whole valuechain, must be considered when talking about a more sustainable alternative, including aspects that were not specific to the product.” These included criteria for purchasing guidelines and supplier selection; the use of renewable energy at all life cycle stages, packaging, transportation and logistics options; and systematic R&D orientation towards sustainability. The SLCA tool, added Sederel, “might become an important element of our sustainability journey, allowing for a more strategic approach towards sustainability that goes well beyond vinyl additives.”

Sustainability -- a Catalyst for Innovation 2008 marked a milestone in our sustainable journey with a comprehensive, strategic effort, in partnership with The Natural Step International, to establish a compelling Vision and Six Commitments that will drive our sustainability profile for years to come.

Sustainability is a big word for an immense and complex challenge, but the Rohm and Haas experience has proved that applying the TNS Framework, a proven, scientifically robust model allows us to have a clearer, more consistent corporate definition of what sustainability means in the real world of business.

For a large, complex, science-driven company like Rohm and Haas, a new product is the work of many hands. The approach demonstrated by Advapak™ NEO shows how we can make real progress on sustainability, using the challenge as a catalyst for innovation, and creating conditions to enhance the capacity of today’s and tomorrow’s generations to meet their needs.