COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. (June 7, 2022) – Today, the American Chemistry Council (ACC) recognized four member companies and one external organization with its 2022 Sustainability Leadership Awards, for innovative products, technologies and initiatives that help advance sustainability.
ACC’s Sustainability Leadership Awards honor member companies for their achievements and contributions to sustainability in priority areas covered by ACC’s Sustainability Principles:
- Product Safety, Innovation & Transparency, for products, processes or initiatives that promote safe use of chemicals, transparency, informed sustainability decision-making and innovation to reduce risk;
- Environmental Protection, for products, processes or initiatives that address the environmental impacts of company products or operations;
- Circularity, for products, processes or initiatives that promote circularity, and;
- Societal Contributions, for products, processes or initiatives that illustrate a commitment to innovating for a sustainable future for society.
In addition, ACC’s “External Collaborator” award recognizes an organization that has collaborated with an ACC member on an initiative that has made significant contributions to sustainability.
ACC members are committed to innovating, developing and deploying products and technologies that advance sustainability by helping to protect the environment, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, enhance circularity and address plastics waste. We are proud to recognize our member companies for substantial achievements in these areas.
ACC recognized the following 2022 Sustainability Leadership Award winners in the following categories:
Product Safety, Innovation & Transparency
- Nouryon, for its “Agrilan®1015 Biodegradable Dispersant”. Farmers rely on dispersants to help the active ingredients in water-based crop protection products and seed-treatment formulations dissolve more easily, but many existing agricultural dispersants are deemed very bio-accumulative and persistent in the environment by regulatory bodies. Agrilan®1015 is biodegradable, not persistent in the environment and can be used in water-based crop protection and seed-treatment formulations to enhance their sustainability profiles.
Environmental Protection
- Clariant Corporation, for its “Free N2O Removal Catalyst for Nitric Acid Producers Worldwide” initiative, a global campaign to provide the company’s EnviCat N2O-S Catalyst free-of-charge to 10 nitric acid producers that do not currently have nitrous oxide (N2O) off-gas treatment in place. Nitrous oxide is a potent greenhouse gas, and the EnviCat N2O-S Catalyst can remove up to 95 percent of nitrous oxide generated in facilities as a byproduct of nitric acid production and convert it into nitrogen and oxygen.
Circularity
- ExxonMobil for its multipronged initiative for “Advancing Circularity in Houston and Beyond,” – which includes start-up of advanced recycling technology at the company’s Baytown, Texas, facility, with initial planned capacity to process 30,000 metric tons of used plastics each year. Additionally, ExxonMobil is enhancing collection and sorting of discarded plastics; developing markets for certified circular food-grade packaging; as well as helping to launch the Houston Recycling Collaboration to expand access to community recycling programs.
Societal Contributions
- Covestro LLC, for its collaboration with the University of Pittsburgh to create the first circular economy-focused graduate program in the United States to help address global waste and its impact on the environment and climate. The program, which will matriculate its first class of graduate students in fall 2022, aims to create opportunities for the research, education and innovative advancement of circular economy principles that begin with academia and fuel real-world solutions.
External Collaborator
- Closed Loop Partners for its collaboration with NOVA Chemicals Corporation, LyondellBasell and Dow to establish the Closed Loop Circular Plastics Fund, a multimillion-dollar fund to accelerate investment in technologies, companies and infrastructure projects that are innovating to source, process and return post-consumer and post-industrial polyethylene and polypropylene plastic into manufacturing supply chains in the U.S. and Canada for use as feedstock for future products and packaging.
ACC convened a judging panel made up of external sustainability leaders from academia, nonprofit and media sectors to review and select the award winners. The judging panel chose winning initiatives based on a range of factors, including the level of innovation the initiative demonstrated, the scope and reach of its impacts and the extent to which it addresses priorities outlined in ACC’s Sustainability Principles and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. ACC received 36 applications from 22 member companies.