IISRP studying ways to improve circularity of SR

HOUSTON—When it comes to meeting future sustainability goals, the synthetic rubber industry has a ways to go.

But with much of the sector tied so closely to petrochemicals, it's imperative SR producers make sure their supply chain begins to move in a more sustainable direction.

And with that in mind, the leaders of the International Synthetic Rubber Association took a concrete first step by completing a custom-made circular economy study of the entire supply chain.

Of note is that tire elastomers currently are about 20-percent circular, according to IISRP Managing Director Juan Ramon Salinas.

"We are analyzing the conclusions, and we want to use this information to implement initiatives in order to improve the sustainability in the SR industry," he told Rubber News in a recent interview.

Given that the members of the Houston-based association collectively produce 75 percent of the world's supply of synthetic rubber, Salinas knows the IISRP is in the best position to lead on this most important initiative.

Institute members discussed the CE study at its meeting last fall, and sustainability will take an even bigger place on the agenda of the upcoming 63rd Annual General Meeting of the IISRP, scheduled for May 16-19 in Boston.

"This study was more of a model," the IISRP leader said. "The idea is to follow up on this topic long term, and review it periodically on whether we are improving the circularity of our industry."

Salinas said the aim is for the institute to analyze the entire supply chain of the SR industry, from raw materials to end users, and determine the circularity in all elastomer types and all applications.

There currently is more data available for elastomers used in the tire and auto industries, as most of the major tire manufacturers have started sustainability work in earnest, with long-term goals to produce a 100-percent sustainable tire by 2050.

Data for the rest of the applications, however, was harder to come by. Salinas said the IISRP can learn from the tire industry, but in other applications the organization may have to start from scratch.

The completed study was comprehensive, he added, looking at all elastomer types, reviewing and calculating the circularity indicators for regions and applications. To make sure it has the information it needs to take action, the association will use the study as the foundation for its next steps.

And while petrochemicals will be one focus of the IISRP's circularity efforts going forward, there will be a number of other perspectives as well. "One input will be from markets," Salinas said. "Customers are requesting more sustainable materials. The auto industry, tire industry, medical, construction. Everything."

Association members also will be urged to look at their own operations in terms of cleaner energy in production of their synthetic rubber lines.

"Our operations should be cleaner in terms of energy used, in terms of the waste that we produce, and in terms of the emissions we emit," he said. "If we look at our supply chains, our raw materials should meet the same requirements, and should be more sustainable materials."

Ideas in play include the increased use of biomonomers, along with using other materials from renewable sources and recycling certain types of oils or certain additives, such as recovered carbon black.

This will give the IISRP a spectrum of information to review and determine what kind of actions it should encourage, according to Salinas. The group also will be able to see what agreements or declarations are established by countries or SR customers, and follow those trends as well.

"Hopefully, this year we can start a benchmarking exercise by members to review the sustainability concepts implementation in our industry worldwide," he said. "As an institute we need to provide these kinds of tools and information to our members that they can use internally in order to implement their own strategies to improve sustainability in their companies."

At the moment, the work by the IISRP has been strictly internal, but Salinas knows that has to change. Future efforts must include working with other entities, associations and even governments to bolster its collection of data in specific areas.

"It's not only our members' collaboration, it's the full supply chain collaboration here," he said, "because we are interrelated—one part of the chain with the next one. We need information from the end-user applications, and they need information from us, and we need it from our raw material suppliers. The whole supply chain will need to collaborate at a certain level."

The association now is considering how to approach the initiative with other stakeholders so that they, in turn, can work to improve circularity for all.

"It's not easy. It's going to be a very hard and long-term job," Salinas said. "We need to collect a lot of data from many applications that we need to study and analyze and collaborate on."