Avient opens CycleWorks facility in Italy

Avient Corp., Cleveland, has opened its CycleWorks facility in Pogliano, Italy, which will conduct chemistry testing and evaluations to help customers overcome the challenge of plastic recycling.

“This high-tech facility will allow our dedicated team to understand the chemistry of polymers in the mechanical recycling process and to see how and where problems occur,” says Jan Sültemeyer, global head of innovation and sustainability at Avient. “For example, why and where are polymer chains degrading? What role do color and additives play in recyclability? It is our goal to find answers to these questions and to understand the science behind recycling.”

“As one of the founding members of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, Avient is committed to doing our part in advancing a circular economy through partnerships and innovation,” says Walter Ripple, vice president of sustainability at Avient. “CycleWorks further strengthens our recycling focus and ability to enable our partners’ recyclability goals.”    

According to a press release from Avient, CycleWorks features a collaboration platform to ensure input from across the plastics value chain. Avient says it expects this to improve the ability of new technologies to be implemented in recycling processes and to assist brand owners in raising the sustainability of their products.

Avient provides specialized and sustainable material solutions, such as barrier technologies that preserve shelf life and quality of food, beverages and other perishable goods through high-performance materials that require less plastic as well as breakthrough technologies that minimize wastewater and improve the recyclability of materials and packaging.