Trinseo | Improving Your Carbon Footprint with the CO2NET™ Product Portfolio

Sustainability remains a topic of interest as industries across the board strive to reduce their carbon footprint. While boosting recyclability and recycling rates is a priority across various materials and value chains, industries with well-established and efficient recycling streams, such as paper and board packaging, go beyond merely looking at recyclability.

Today, companies active in such areas are more closely examining what materials are used in their product, what they are made from, and how they are made in an effort to reduce their products’ carbon footprint.

To meet our customer’s needs in their journey to net zero, Trinseo created and is further expanding the CO2NET™ product portfolio.

Reducing Carbon Emissions

The new Trinseo CO2NET™ product portfolio is designed to generate at least 50% fewer carbon emissions compared to their fossil-derived counterparts, with the goal of lowering emissions to net zero carbon.

In a first step, CO2NET™ Binders are manufactured using an ISCC-certified mass balance approach providing a near-term solution to integrate sustainable feedstock into the value chain. The performance properties of these types of binders remain unchanged versus their fossil-derived counterparts. Furthermore, Trinseo is already manufacturing and marketing bio-hybrid binders that contain renewable content in the form of biopolymers to meet the CO2NET™ emission reduction requirements. These products also undergo a Product Carbon Footprint Assessment, which is a systematic cradle-to-gate analysis of the product’s potential environmental impact and ensures that their carbon footprint can be gauged correctly. Additionally, we work closely with the industry to enable full Life Cycle Assessments as required. We are continuously enhancing our capability to accurately measure, track, and certify the carbon footprint of our products.

In parallel, Trinseo is advancing technology developments by integrating additional circular, bio-derived materials and biopolymers into its binder product offering. Consequently, the range of CO2NET™ products will be expanded continuously, and we will provide diverse solutions to further reduce the environmental impact of the industries we serve.

Designed for a Variety of Industries

The first products available within the CO2NET™ portfolio are latex binders for use in paperboard and specialty paper applications, where there is a high demand for more sustainable solutions to cut carbon emissions.

These materials are used largely for cellulose-based packaging materials, for which the binder provides essential properties, be it as a pigment binder for the coating layers, a barrier coating, or in the form of a laminating adhesive for flexible or rigid packaging materials. Utilizing CO2NET™ Binders helps reduce the overall carbon emissions of these products and meets the industry demand for more sustainable solutions.

While CO2NET™ binders are already improving the environmental impact of the packaging industry, Trinseo is committed to expanding the portfolio to serve as a reliable and sustainable material option for many industries and applications.

The CO2NET™ product portfolio can lower carbon emissions for many applications while continuing to deliver the required performance properties. Looking ahead, the CO2NET™ product portfolio will continue to expand and evolve as more product offerings are added to address the sustainability needs of more industries.