The Plastics Industry Association (PLASTICS) has announced the winners of its 2021 Re|focus Sustainability Innovation Awards, recognizing companies driving environmental advances in product design, sustainable materials and end-of-life recovery of plastics.
Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company is the recipient of this year’s Materials award for a composite incorporating biomaterial from coffee manufacturing. The composite is 17% lighter, requiring 25% less energy to produce and more sustainable than the talc-filled material that was its predecessor.
PLASTICS also announced the winners of the Re|focus Leadership and People’s Choice awards.
Chevron Phillips Chemical
The Leadership Award, the award for the company with the best overall score across the three categories, goes to Chevron Phillips Chemical for converting difficult-to-recycle plastic waste into top-quality raw materials.
“Receiving the 2021 Re|focus Sustainability Leadership Innovation Award underscores our commitment to advance a circular economy for plastics,” said Benny Mermans, Vice President, Sustainability, at Chevron Phillips Chemical. “Through Marlex® Anew™ Circular Polyethylene and our expanding efforts to create sustainable streams for waste plastics, Chevron Phillips Chemical is well-positioned to deliver sustainable solutions for years to come.”
Ford Otosan
The People’s Choice Award winner is Ford Otosan for an automotive fan shroud that is produced with 50% recycled material and reduces the CO2 produced in the manufacturing process.
“Since we started on the project in 2019 to develop a part that provides the same performance level by using recycled material instead of the conventional fan shroud part made of only raw plastic, we have successfully decreased carbon emissions related to production and achieved a 17% cost savings with a 2.2 kg carbon footprint reduction per piece,” said Özak Durmuş, Ford Otosan Sustainability Senior Engineer. “This is a very significant step toward increasing the demand for recycled plastics and creating a circular economy structure in Turkey.”
Tony Radoszewski, CEO of PLASTICS, congratulated the winners and thanked all who entered the awards competition, saying, “I’m proud to be part of an industry filled with so much innovative thinking.”
“We had a record-setting year of 52 entries for the 2021 awards and 3,080 votes cast for our People’s Choice Award,” said Patrick Krieger, Senior Director of Materials & Sustainability for PLASTICS. “The applications are incredibly diverse, showing how sustainability is being incorporated into plastics.”
Nominations for the 2022 PLASTICS Re|focus Sustainability Innovation Awards commence in November of this year.
About Plastics Industry Association
The Plastics Industry Association (PLASTICS) is the only organization that supports the entire plastics supply chain, representing nearly one million workers in the $432 billion U.S. industry. Since 1937, PLASTICS has been working to make its members and the industry more globally competitive while advancing recycling and sustainability. To learn more about PLASTICS’ education initiatives, industry-leading insights and events, networking opportunities and policy advocacy and the largest plastics trade show in the Americas, NPE: The Plastics Show
More Stories
Mosaic Click board from MIKROE delivers global coverage multi-band and multi-constellation tracking ability
Current transducer from Danisense selected for DC charging station testing device demonstrator at TU Graz
New Click board from MIKROE helps develop and train ML models for vibration analysis