Sustainability has become a major driver for the adhesive industry. While companies are striving to define and achieve sustainability goals, there is a need for education, collaboration, and transparency on the matter.
Enhancing sustainability requires companies to re-think their solutions and take a product life cycle approach to identify opportunities for improvement. This increases the level of complexity and brings in an exciting challenge: How can we help customers to integrate their processes and products into the biobased and circular economy? As a leader in pine chemicals, Kraton has always supported the use of renewable raw materials. Almost a decade ago, we joined a biobased certification process and started educating our customers about it. Later, aware of the upcoming trends towards low carbon footprint and better information around other environmental features, we undertook the life cycle assessment of selected products. We continue to exchange knowledge and share data with our customers on the topic. More recently we investigated the need for ISCC plus certification schemes, that is required by some end markets. We explore every opportunity to help our customer and eventually the end user making the most educated purchasing decisions. Raw material suppliers are faced with numerous requests and methods or standards, highlighting the need for collaboration across the value chain to maintain credibility and avoid greenwashing
In this presentation, Kraton will explain clarify how biobased tackifiers can help customers and the value chain to meet their sustainability goals by providing concrete examples. We will also review the relevance and value of biobased certification programs, traceability of feedstock schemes and life cycle assessments to make credible sustainability claims that can help consumers make educated purchasing decisions.
Co-authors: Roger Steens, Peter Migchels, Rendert de Vos