Document 109weLk68JGnOpO8pZvY0DEy5

Transcript presenta,on PU in the sustainability and circular world By Bart J. ten Brink For Interna:onal PU Forum Nagoya Japan June 2023 Ladies and gentlemen, it's my real honor and pleasure to present in the Interna6onal PU Forum 2023, the presenta6on of what polyurethane is doing to the sustainability and circular world and what are the impacts for the PU-industry, next to what has been done worldwide in efforts to deal with all these trends. But first of all, I want to thank the organizers of the interna6onal polyurethane forum and in specific Mr. Inoe, for invi6ng me in this forum, the organizing commiKee for all arrangements and in specific Mr. Hirayama for his incredible support. It's much appreciated and many thanks again. The agenda of my speech can be split out in five topic points. 1. Status of Europe and the European flexible PU foam industry 2. Sustainability of flexible PU foam & the environmental impact and challenges. 3. The regulatory framework in the European Union. 4. Flexible PU Foam recycling ini6a6ves, and renewable alterna6ves in Europe. 5. Conclusions and open ques6ons. Let me first start with the status of European flexible PU foam industry. Europur is the European associa6on of the flexible PU foam block producers. Our members operate PU foam produc6on plans in 28 countries in geographical Europe. Together our members operate more than 70% of the PU foam plants in wider Europe and produce around 1.1 million tons of PU foam which is roughly 80% of the total produc6on in the region EU-28. Some of them, also produce maKresses and furniture directly. Europur is organized in working groups. We have a fast majority of our members who are par6cipa6ng and contribu6ng to these working groups. The working groups are split into four different groups. 1. the Environmental Health and Safety working group. 2. the Product Stewards working group 3. the Sustainability working group. 4. the Communica6ons working group. When we look at the European flexible foam industry in 2021, we saw that in total 1.7 million tons of flexible foam was produced of which 279,000 tons was in of molded PU foam produc6on and roughly 1.4 6ll 1.5 million tons of PU slab stock foam produc6on. When we split up the slab stock foam produc6on in polyester and polyester slab stock produc6on, we could see that most of the total produc6on was polyether slab stock foam produc6on, with roughly 1.4 million tons and 61000 tons was polyester slab stock foam produc6on. The total number of con6nuous foaming plants were 160, and the es6mated PU foam industry turnover was more than 5 billion. The market could be roughly split into furniture foams 50%, maKresses 35%, foams to the automo6ve industry 10% and 5% was going to the industrial applica6ons. Let me take you now towards the sustainability of flexible PU form and the environmental impact and challenges. The main environmental impacts which are caused by flexible PU form can be split out into the following. 1. resource deple6on 2. energy consump6on 3. pollu6on 4. landfill waste 5. and lack of recyclability Let me quickly run you through this; resource deple,on flexible polyurethane foam is typical made from fossil-based chemicals. Energy consump,on the produc6on process of flexible polyurethane foam requires a significant amount of energy which contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and climate change. Pollu,on the produc6on process of flexible polyurethane foam can be harmful to human health and the environment and landfill waste flexible polyurethane foam is not biodegradable and when it ends up in landfills it can take hundreds of years to decompose and then we look at when we look at lack of recyclability the lack of effec6ve recycling technologies for flexible polyurethane foam means that much of it ends up s6ll in landfills or incinerators exacerba6ng the environmental impacts. So, to conclude these environmental impacts make it necessary to find more sustainable solu,ons for flexible polyurethane foams to reduce its nega6ve effects on the environment. When we look at the challenges to make polyurethane more sustainable, we see a couple of aspects which are very important. Let's first look at cost sustainable materials and produc6on processes can be more expensive than tradi6onal ones making it challenging for companies to adopt them. And when we look at performance flexible polyurethane foam has specific performance requirements such as durability and comfort which sustainable alterna6ves may not meet without compromising performance. The next three which I want to take you through are. regula,on lack of infrastructure and consumer behavior Looking first at the regula,on there is a lack of consistent regula6ons and standards for sustainable materials and produc6on processes, making it difficult for companies to know which solu6ons are best to adopt. When we look at the lack of infrastructure, we see that the lack of recycling infrastructure makes it challenging to recycle and repurpose end of life products. When we look at consumer behavior, we see that there is s6ll a lack of awareness and educa6on among consumers about the importance of sustainability in products, making it challenging for companies to priori6ze sustainability without consumer demand. So, conclusions on the challenges to make PU more sustainable; overcoming these challenges will require collabora,ons among stakeholders in the industry to promote sustainable solu6ons and make them economically viable and readily available. When we look at the regulatory framework, we see that `the global 2030 UN agenda for sustainable development' is influencing the world of polyurethanes a lot. Not all goals influence PU as such and therefore I took. out of the 17 sustainable development UN goals, those goals which are influencing our industry the most. Let's quickly look over it; good health and well-being is influencing polyurethane next to decent work and economic growth 9 industry innova,on and infrastructure 11 sustainable ci,es and communi,es 12 responsible consump,on and produc,on and 13 climate ac,on. When we look at the regulatory framework in the EU the European Green deal is influencing the PU markets a lot. There are several ac6on points which are immediately taken effect on our industry in general. The European Green Deal is demanding 55% reduc,on of greenhouse gases emissions by 2030 and climate CO2 neutrality by 2050 We see in this regulatory framework in the EU, lots of legisla6on coming up. Let me men6on two of them where Europur is also involved in the discussion. We talk about the sustainability product policy ini,a,ve including furniture and the review of the end-of-life vehicles direc,ve. The chemical industry is also involved a lot, via their several associa6on par6cipa6ons. Some of the the ini6a6ves which are discussed for the moment like for example review of industrial emissions direc,ve, but also many others. Let me take you to the draM Eco Design for sustainable products regula,ons, layed out by the EU commission. The core of this ini6a6ve is to explore the poten6al of expanding the scope of the eco-design direc6ve to non-energy related products and propose addi6onal legisla6ve measures as appropriate. It aims at making products placed on the EU market more sustainable. The Commission considers addressing the following aspects as part of this legisla6on ini6a6ve. 1. Improving product durability reusability, upgradability, and repairability, addressing the presence of hazardous chemicals 2. Increasing recycled content and products and enabling remanufacturing and highquality recycling 3. And finally rewarding products based on their different sustainability performance including by linking high performance levels to incen6ves. When we look at the 6meline; in March 22 there was a proposal and in June 22 there was an end of consulta6on followed by ongoing review by the council and European Parliament. In Q4 there was a trilogue and in 2023 there will be an adap6on. So you see this looks slow, but it will come to us rather quickly!! The conclusions on regulatory developments are that. changes will affect three main markets for PU upholstery furniture bedding and automo6ve. they will include increased recycling of postconsumer foams and crea6on of market space for recyclates.  there is a need for increased circula6on of informa6on along this supply chain like LCA data. and requirements for increased openness towards consumers like digital product passports there is also poten6al danger of mul6plica6on of closed loop for materials. and there is a poten6al danger of overlap of legisla6ons like for example REACH, CLP, ESPR. When we look at the current EPR schemes in Europe for maKresses and furniture we see that this has been taken off in only a couple of countries. We see in the Netherlands MRN and retour maKress (part of Ikea) successful in the first stage, in Belgium it's called Valuemat and in France the ini6a6ve is leaded by Eco-mobilier, the French governmental organiza6on. For the moment there are also discussions in Scotland and Spain and Italy and we see also clearly that the other countries like for example Germany, UK and also some other big countries are hesita6ng and wai6ng a lot. My advice don't wait too long...! When we look at the regulatory developments globally, we see that in China there are a couple of standards coming up like the VOC emission standards, the Environmental Protec6on tax and import and export regula6ons. In the US it is mainly the flammability standards, the VOC emission standards, and the an6-dumping tariffs. Let me take you now to the PU foam recycling ini6a6ves and sustainability alterna6ves in Europe. First of course we have mechanical recycling where companies make from PU waste materials, rebounded PU Foam. The waste materials used, are either post industrial waste or post-consumer waste. This is going through a process with mechanical grinding, mixing with prepolymer and pressing under high temperature (steam), pressuring up 6ll the right endproduct is obtained. We es6mate that 40 million maKresses reach end of life per year in the wider EU in the coming years to come, and the es6mates are that poten6al postconsumer EOL foam could be available for recycling, at around 240 to 290,000 tons/ year from maKresses and 350 to 400,000 tons from furniture, so that's a lot. When this all must go back in circularity this means lots of development work s6ll to be made. When we look at mechanical recycling in Europe clearly the end-markets are the limits In the graph you can see the global flexible PU slab stock produc6on in kilotons from 2013 to 2020, which shows that we reached roughly 5 million tons PU produced year globally in 2020, where China was the biggest market aqer Europe. When we than look at the graph of the es6mated global supply and demand for trim foam and we look at the 2020 figure, then we see that postproduc6on (PIW) was roughly 1.3 million tons and postconsumer was 140,000 tons resul6ng the total trim from supply of 1.4 million tons. Es6mated demand amount was 1.3 million tons so there was a surplus of 151,000 tons. Next to mechanical recycling there are also a lot of ini6a6ves on chemical recycling. Chemical recycling is a process where flexible polyurethane foam is broken down into specific cons6tuent raw materials which can be used again to make fresh foam or other polymeric plas6cs. It allows the use of plas6c waste, especially feedstock, not feasible for mechanical recycling. We can see two types of chemical recycling. depolymeriza,on which involves the breaking down of the polymer chain of foam into smaller molecules that can be used to create new products. The main methods here are hydrolysis, glycolysis, acidolysis and aminolysis. These technologies are all differen6ated by the base materials used to dissolve PU foam. Next to this we see thermochemical recycling. Materials mostly non-PU disintegrated at molecular level, crea6ng new raw materials by the petrochemical industry. The three main technologies here are pyrolysis, gasifica6on, and hydrogena6on. The important difference between them is that pyrolysis happens in the absence of oxygen. Chemical recycling helps to reduce the amount of waste ending up in landfills or incinerators and it helps also to meet increasing demand for sustainable products and materials. It reduces dependence on virgin materials, conserves natural resources and reduce to carbon footprints. Let me look a liKle bit at the pros and cons of depolymeriza6on and thermochemical recycling. A plus of depolymeriza6on is that it helps to conserve resources by conver6ng end of life polyurethane form into feedstock for new polyurethane applica6ons and the plus for thermochemical recycling is it could deliver virgin quality material with 100% recycled mass balance. The nega6ve side of depolymeriza6on is compara6vely higher costs than of mechanical recycling, a somewhat poorer environmental performance due to the energy intensive processes, and lower recycling yields by current available technologies than of mechanical recycling. The nega6ve side of thermochemical recycling is compara6vely higher cost than of mechanical recycling, substan6al poorer environmental performance due to the energy intensive processes and significantly lower recycling yields by current available technologies than of mechanical recycling. Let me take you through the current ini6a6ve which we see in the EU-28 already on the aspects of depolymeriza6on. The following companies were already in a recent progress. Orrion Chemicals in France in coopera6on with DOW; the plant has been opera6onal since autumn 2021. Repsol build a chemolysis process in Spain and the produc6on has now started. Retour maKress is majority held by the holding company IKEA, which has built a chemolysis plant in the Netherlands which has started now also in 2023. We see the company Evonik, who has started a hydrolysis recycling process and the company Triple Helix in Belgium who has obtained planning permission for a chemolysis plant in the Port of Antwerp. In 2021 Covestro started a pilot plan for PU chemical recycling in coopera6on with ecomobilier (as announced in 2021). Next to this all there were also some other ini6a6ves like Urban-rec, rePURpose by Tempur and PureSmart which was a coopera6on between Rec6cel and Covestro which have commonly developed a new type of PU Capu plus chemical recycling (the project has been completed at the end of 2022) There are lots of ongoing projects, as you can see on this slide. I don't want to go into detail, but you can see that in Europe there is a lot of ac6on, communica6on, and developments around chemical recycling. When we look at the different types of recycling methods, we can see actually four different types of recycling methods in this slide you can see mechanical recycling which I already explained, as also depolymeriza6on and thermochemical recycling, But I did not elaborate into mass-balance approach. Let me go a liKle bit in a `deep dive' of mass-balance approach. Up to 100% virgin equivalent of polyols and isocyanates can be used in foam formula6ons, coming from mass-balance approach and the proper6es of the output from the masbalance approach is the same as of fossil based raw materials so there is no compromising on specifica6ons. Unknown now is the regulatory astude towards this recycling approach and whether it will be accepted as recycling technology. Unknown is also the energy consump6on contribu6ng to the overall CO2 footprint. When we look at the foam recycling recyclates and downstream markets. MaKresses and furniture are most suitable for PU-recycling. High specifica6ons in the automo6ve chain require virgin equivalence of raw materials. So let us look at the downstream market when we look at a furniture this means large volumes, but not always easy to dismantle and they are hardly recycled today. They can be used for mechanical recycling, chemical recycling, and mass balance approach in this preference order. For maKress and bedding, the recycling increases across Northwestern Europe. Ongoing challenges are separate dry collec6on and design for dismantling. The poten6al use of to recycle is here suitable for chemical recycling, partly mechanical recycling, and mass balance approach. In the automo6ve industry we see that many small pieces and mul6 material parts followed by difficult dismantling makes recycling also very difficult today. The very high and complex specifica6on of this industry could lead the way towards poten6ally mass balance approach as preferred op6on, and secondly poten6al use in mechanical recycling and third chemical recycling. So when we look at the total circularity we see that raw materials are being put into produc6on and transforma6on, there's logis6cs, there's a use phase, there's an end of life phase, there's energy recovery and there's recycling and then it can go back into the circle. Let me talk a liKle bit about non-fossil materials for foams in foam formula6ons. Research has been done to make NIPU's, but it has never been successful at industrial scale implemented. Also here the debate comes up again whether we should use food sources to make plas6cs? Regarding polyols, non-fossil or less fossil alterna6ve exist at variable percentages in foam formula6ons. This is for example biomaterials (example Castor oil rap- seed and soybean). CO2 polyols maybe less mainstream than for biopolymers, but foams are on the market today. Up to 20% of CO2 is bound into the polyol. Then we talk about recycled polyols; one larger foam producer in France is offering foams with recycled polyols. Others will likely follow soon. Current products can be used up to certain percentages in formula6on. Some companies work at re-polyols that can be used 100% in formula6ons. And then we talk about grinded foams. Some companies use this technology to save on fossil-based materials. However, this technology is rather energy intensive. Via mass-balance; making par6al use of biomaterials or recyclates. Main chemical providers are working on it. Both for the di-isocyanides and polyols frac6ons. Same produc6on processes as conven6onal di-isocyanates and polyols, also able to go to a 100% in formula6ons. Conclusions like many other industries the flexible PU foam supply chain is going to experience fundamental changes due to the European Green Deal and pertaining policies in its three main markets upholstery furniture bedding and automo6ve. The EU's ambi6ous targets will require. 1. development of collec6on systems 2. coexistence of recycling technology 3. improved design for dismantling and design for recycling 4. amendments to EOL's handling of goods. It's easier said than done. There are also plenty of open ques6ons s6ll... Let me take you a liKle bit through the open ques6ons. 1. recycled content which percent by when versus carbon footprint. Closed loop versus open loop 2. acceptance of chemical recycling we need recycling facili,es which are not present today. 3. how can sor,ng be improved to facilitate chemical recycling because we see that the input raw material coming out of EOL and the quality of that is very important to sustain and stable chemical reac6ve process? 4. what about biobased raw materials? 5. conformity to informa6on obliga6ons? 6. will OEM and consumers be willing to pay a premium for advanced technologies. Compromise on the specifica6ons? and to what extent these compromises affect durability? and what's its correla6on with product life cycle environmental impact? Let's go back to real poli6c! We see also that lots of European countries are returning to dirty coal as Russia turn off the gas taps. The eurozone infla,on climbed to a new high record of 10.7% in October last year and the energy prices will remain high and vola6le 6ll at least the end of 2023, or even probably the coming years (the EU Commission says), and EU lawmakers remove the last hurdle to label gas nuclear as green? Parliament votes to approve include gas in taxonomy. Regula6on will most likely enter into force in 2023. There are lots of things to do! Personally, I think that polyurethane is a versa,le material for the future, taken into account that we have to solve also certain aspects which could endanger polyurethane as a future material. Let's all work on that!! Thank you very much for your aKen6on and the stage is open for ques6ons now. Bart J ten brink President Europur AISBL June 2023