IGPN - International Green Purchasing Network

August 17, 2016

Adding Value, Sustainability to the Supply Chain by Recycling the Unrecyclable

August 17, 2016
by Tom Szaky

One of the most significant challenges that manufacturers and major brands face today is maintaining high sustainability standards across their entire supply and production chain. It’s no new idea that consumer brands that have not embraced sustainability and CSR initiatives are at risk on many fronts, but integrating more environmentally sound and socially responsible processes requires sweeping infrastructure changes that many businesses may have difficulty implementing and sustaining.

Striving to mitigate costs and reduce uncertainty, businesses are constantly presented with prohibitive obstacles that, like most institutional challenges, boil down to a matter of economics. Companies and manufacturers are concerned about their bottom line and may see little economic incentive to reallocate resources necessary to improve the sustainability of their supply chain.

However, some companies see the massive ROI potential for setting their own bar on sustainability and keeping it high, giving themselves room to scale for growth.

For example, Henkel is one of TerraCycle’s newest corporate partners; because of the partnership, it is now the first company to offer a recycling solution for anaerobic adhesive packaging. Through the LOCTITE® Anaerobic Adhesive Recycling Program, Henkel customers can now purchase a postage-paid recycling box that they fill with empty LOCTITE adhesive containers to send to TerraCycle for processing. TerraCycle will thermally treat the containers and turn them into new plastic products, such as park benches, chairs, watering cans and even paving stones.

A global industry leader undertaking such an extensive recycling initiative is impressive, as recycling anaerobic adhesive packaging is not without its challenges - these containers are not accepted by the conventional waste management infrastructure due to the residual adhesive. Learning about the adhesives and how they cure allowed us at TerraCycle to develop a solution and recycle this category of material for the first time.

Read more at Sustainable Brands.

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