DuPont Earns Sustainability Award for Recycling Program in Brazil

DuPont has received the 2010 Premio ECO Award in the Sustainability in Products category for its role in a closed-loop recycling process for agrochemical multilayer bottles. DuPont Latin America president Eduardo Wanick accepted the award during an international ceremony in São Paulo, Brazil.

In the award-winning "Virtuous Cycle using Fusabond" program, agrochemical multilayer bottles are recycled into high-value industrial applications - shown here in flexible corrugated pipes.

“It is a great honor to be recognized, not only for the environmental impact of this recycling program, but for the science behind it,” says Wanick. “Multilayer containers pose a great recycling challenge due to the variety of plastic materials used in the construction.”

The “Virtuous Cycle using Fusabond” project relies on the special characteristic of the DuPont Fusabond coupling agent to make compatible and bond dissimilar polymers in the recycling process. Fusabond improves impact resistance, surface finish and the ability of parts and films to be processed so the recycled product can be used to form other articles with little material loss, according to a DuPont press release.

Empty agricultural chemical packaging is collected by the National Institute for the Processing of Empty Packaging (inPEV), launched by government mandate and initially supported by 22 companies, including DuPont. Since 2002, more than 150,000 tons of empty packaging has been collected.

Brazil reports that for used agricultural chemical packaging it has a 95 percent collection rate, compared with Canada (73 percent), Germany (76 percent), France (66 percent) and the United States (30 percent), according to DuPont.

“Innovative programs such as these evolve when the entire value chain is engaged,” says Wanick.

The ECO Award, organized by Amcham (American Chamber of Commerce) and newspaper Valor Economico, launched in 1982 and awards socially responsible companies and emerging sustainable practices.