With the ISCC Plus certification of its Leverkusen and Dormagen production sites, Covestro can now supply renewably attributed raw materials from all three Lower Rhine sites in Germany, the company announced 10 February. Its Krefeld-Uerdingen site had obtained certification a year ago, as had the plants in Antwerp and Shanghai. “With more sites to follow,” said Covestro CTO Klaus Schäfer.
At these sites, the mass balance principle is applied: bio-based or recycled raw materials – in this case reprocessed residual materials – are fed in at an early stage of raw material extraction and mathematically attributed to the finished products. This saves fossil raw materials and reduces greenhouse gas emissions, while the quality of the mass-balanced products remains the same compared to purely fossil-based ones. For Covestro, these products are selected polycarbonates, components for polyurethane rigid and flexible foams, PU coating and adhesive raw materials, thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPUs) and specialty films, all offering the same quality and properties as their fossil-based counterparts. This approach also allows manufacturers to continue to use their proven formulations, equipment and processes.
The company noted that adopting the mass balance methodology made it possible to introduce the use of alternative raw materials and to reduce CO2 emissions along the value chains, thus helping customers ‘better to achieve their sustainability goals and drive the transition to a circular economy’, said COO Sucheta Govil.
ISCC ("International Sustainability and Carbon Certification") is an internationally recognized system for sustainability certification of biomass and bioenergy, among others. The standard covers all stages of the value chain and is widely used worldwide. ISCC Plus includes further certification options for technical-chemical applications, among others, including plastics from biomass.