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Our ambition is to be a leader in recycling in the Americas and a company that’s developing the recycling supply chain where we operate. Our transition to a circular economy is deeply rooted in mechanical and advanced recycling solutions. We continue to act in partnership with other members of the value chain to strengthen mechanical recycling and overcome barriers and ensure the increased production of high-quality recycled material. We also continue to work on improving technologies and solutions for advanced recycling, that is, the transformation of plastic waste into the base chemical building blocks for manufacturing new plastic products.
Our transition strategy to a circular economy is deeply rooted in mechanical and advanced recycling solutions. We continue to work in partnership with others in our value chain to strengthen mechanical recycling and overcome economic, technical and logistical barriers to ensure increased production of high-quality recycled material. We also continue to work on improving technologies and solutions for advanced recycling, that is, the transformation of plastic waste into the base chemical building blocks for manufacturing new plastic products.
Since 2018, we have become members of the Operation Clean Sweep program, and we are committed to adopting the best practices in the control of pellets, flakes, and dust in all our industrial units. Our goal was to become a member of OCS blue - the highest level of participation in the program by 2020, and we were able to achieve this goal both in Brazil and in the United States. In all, the actions of the Zero Pellet Program, along with the other pellet containment actions, contributed to collecting approximately 2,000 tons of pellets, flakes and powders, preventing them from reaching rivers and seas.
Our portfolio of products with recycled content includes chemicals and resins, which are commercialized under the brand I’m’ greenTM Recycled. In 2021, sales of products with recycled content increased by 145% compared to 2020, totaling 22.2 thousand tons. Sales of I’m greenTM resins increased 175% in the same period, a total of 20.2 thousand tons.
In December 2021, a recycling line entered into operation in Indaiatuba, in São Paulo’s inland, developed in partnership with Valoren, a waste management company. With an investment of R$67 million, the unit has a production capacity of 14,000 tons of polyethylene and polypropylene per year from post-consumption waste, the equivalent to a reduction of 250 million plastic packaging per year in landfills.
Meeting the growing demands of sustainability and circularity of society requires much more than the use of recycled materials. We need to fundamentally rethink the entire product, from extraction of resources and production of materials to the consumer experience. That’s what Braskem proposes: we combine our polymer expertise and transformation processes with consumer knowledge of brand owners to deliver an incredible experience with the lowest environmental impact possible. Aiming more sustainable and circular packaging, we have developed a design for environment methodology that uses lifecycle analysis to identify environmental hotspots throughout the product lifecycle. From this scientifically identified gap, the next step is to explore the consumer universe and its journey, maximizing attractiveness and usability. The ideation/prototyping/testing loop is repeated until we can combine sustainability, circularity and consumer experience into a single product.
In the United States, Braskem became a founding member of the Polypropylene Recycling Coalition, which focuses on growing household access to PP recycling and ensuring that PP material is widely recovered and recycled - targeting end markets such as food and beverage packaging, consumer products and automotive parts.
In Mexico, Braskem Idesa partnered with Alcamare, the region’s largest recycler, for PE and PP recycling. Products with recycled plastic are already being produced, and the companies are working together to develop a food-contact approved recycled grade in 2022.