Arkema wants to work with our customers on each side of the supply chain –those who want to recycle their polymers, and those who wish to purchase partially recycled grades. Our focus is on polyamide 11 and polyamide 12 resins, PEBA elastomers, and PVDF fluoropolymers.
Arkema acts as a kind of “match-maker” in terms of sourcing materials to be recycled and matching those materials with customers who desire partially recycled grades with a more favorable LCA profile.
Arkema’s recent acquisition of Agiplast, a high performance polymer recycler/ regenerator with a long history of high performance polymer re-engineering, recompounding, and re-certification, adds a new dimension to our traditional offer. The time is now.
Today’s tubing, clothing, sunglasses and running shoes become tomorrow’s ski boots, luggage, helmets, and storage tanks. No compromise on performance!
The time is now
In order for the planet to deliver on commitments required to meet the Paris accord goals, a worldwide effort will be required to reduce greenhouse gases and limit climate change.
Each year, the world produces some 380 million tons of plastic. OECD reports that only about 10% of this volume is recycled.
Among high performance plastics, the percentage is even lower. However, these advanced materials, often designed for their durability, are sometimes among the best candidates for repeated mechanical recycling. The time is now to step up.
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Step into the loop and watch the Virtucycle Program video!
The Virtucycle® program is a partnership program offered to Arkema’s high performance polymers customers and downstream users.
The program enables our partners to “step into the loop” by providing polymer for reprocessing, or to source new materials with a minimum recycled content and no compromise in performance
Reengineered, Recompounded and Recertified
Reengineered
As compounding experts, Arkema ensures no compromise in high performance by selecting just the right blend of additives tailored to the target application. It’s all about consistency.
Recompounded
During the mechanical recycling step, it’s all about getting the right balance of new/virgin material blended with just the right level of recycle material. The recycled component offers approximately 85% reduction in climate change impact (depending on the resin of course) compared to 100% virgin polymer manufacture. And during this step, Arkema uses 100% renewable energy.
Recertified
We stand confidently behind our products. All recycled products produced by the Virtucycle® program meet strict performance and LCA standards.
Enabling a durable world
Single use plastics have quickly become the “face” of the problem concerning plastic waste – in the soil, in the oceans, on the streets – these throwaway behaviors have created a serious problem.
The time is now to enable a durable society instead of a disposable society – to embrace longer service life, continuous use, and re-use/recycling. Arkema’s Virtucycle® program is designed to help our customers achieve this goal by taking advantage of our high performance polyamide and fluoropolymer resins that are ideally suited for repeated cycles of mechanical recycling (in combination with various levels of virgin material) to ensure premium performance and lower climate change impact.
The loop options
An important aspect to understand is closed loop vs open loop. At Arkema we can facility and support both. The open-loop comitments often allow a more widespread effect on overall circularity on a global scale.
Closed-Loop: Items (and perhaps their recovered materials) are recycled into similar items for similar applications
Open-Loop: Items (and perhaps their recovered materials) are recycled into dissimilar items for different applications
Feeding the loop
Crucial to the success of any recycling program is the constant flow and supply of materials to Reengineer, Recompound, and Recertify. Therefore the main sources of materials most common are Pre-consumer or Post-consumer. These 2 supply in many ways, shapes and forms the success of the Virtucycle® program.
Pre-Consumer: Materials that have been industrially processed but not turned into final products (so, usually scrapped)
Post-Consumer: Materials have been industrially processed and used as final products in end-use applications
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See what our customers are saying
Materialise, a leader in 3D-printed eyewear and promoter of sustainability in 3D printing, is committed to reducing their carbon footprint by 50% by 2025. For 3D printing powder that can no longer be used in additive manufacturing process, Materialise works alongside with Agiplast’s Arkema recycling site to turn this powder into pellets for injection molding. Arkema has supplied long chain polyamides to the additive manufacturing for over 20 years and is proud to partner with Materialise to make powder bed fusion technology even more circular by recycling end of life powder.
“Discover How Materialise and Arkema partnership can extend the life cycle of used polyamide powder like never before”