Enabling Sustainability for Our Customers
As a global leader in innovative sustainable solutions, we collaborate closely with our customers to help them achieve their sustainability goals. Through materials science & formulation expertise, design capabilities and deep market knowledge, we partner with our customers to develop solutions and services that achieve the sustainable attributes desired at the performance level needed for the application. To enable sustainability for our customers, key areas of focus include advancing a circular economy, reducing carbon footprint and developing alternative materials.
Advancing a Circular Economy
As the world continues to shift from operating in a linear economy to a circular economy, Avient is proud to be a part of the solution. A circular economy aims to design out waste and pollution, keep products and materials in use, and regenerate natural systems. Through our design expertise and materials science, we help our customers reduce material usage, enable recyclability or recycle content, and improve physical performance. Through our design expertise and material science, we help our customers reduce material usage, enable recyclability or recycle content, and improve physical performance. With resources like Cycleworks™ Innovation Center for Plastic Recycling and Color Prediction Service, Avient continues to strengthen our expertise to enable our customers to meet their sustainability commitments.
In alignment with our customers, we set a 2030 sustainability goal to enable 100% of our materials for the consumer packaging market to be recyclable, reusable, or compostable. While we continue to make progress on this goal, we recognize that only 9% of the world’s plastic is recycled by end-users.* Through our alliances and partnerships, we remain committed to ending plastic waste in the environment though global investments and projects.
*Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and National Geographic
Reducing Carbon Footprint
What is a carbon footprint?
Carbon footprint is the total amount of greenhouse gases (including carbon dioxide and methane) generated by individual actions. A company’s carbon footprint includes all emissions from the supply chain, logistics, usage and disposal of all products.
How does Avient help reduce carbon footprint?
We start by helping our customers understand the carbon footprint of their existing materials through Avient’s product carbon footprint calculator, certified by TÜV Rheinland. We collaborate across the value chain from suppliers to converters and brand owners to identify opportunities to help meet their sustainability goals. We enable a lower carbon footprint through:
- Reduced carbon footprint technologies
- Lightweighting and design
- Improved recyclability
- Increased recycle content
- Bio-derived solutions
More detail about Avient’s Product Carbon Footprint calculator can be found in the Product Excellence section of the sustainability report.
Developing More Sustainable Alternatives
The need for more sustainable alternatives to existing materials are driven by a range of factors from increased performance requirements, to meeting consumer preferences, to addressing evolving legislation. Avient has developed technologies to address these needs, including composites that lightweight to decrease carbon emissions, specialty additive alternatives that enable more recyclable products, and biobased solutions that lower product carbon footprint.
Regulations related to chemicals are also evolving globally. As certain chemicals are required to be replaced, our customers need more sustainable alternatives to meet or exceed the performance requirements of their applications. Avient’s product stewardship team monitors the status of various chemistries and works with our R&D teams to drive the innovation pipeline with these alternative solutions.