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Sustainability Statement

Polygreen's vision is to enhance sustainability in all aspects in which super absorbent polymers are used or can be used.

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The awareness of sustainability and sustainable development is gaining momentum among consumers, regulators, and corporates. There is now widespread emphasis on the reduction of consumption, the efficiency of manufacturing, and avoiding waste/contamination so as to minimise our ecological footprint. This activity is commonly described by corporates under  the framework of ESG and the UN SDGs which define goals to tackle issues like Climate Change, Global Warming, and Waste Management.

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Polygreen's  mission is to provide global corporates with effective tools to meet their sustainability goals, and particularly so in the Hygiene and Agriculture sectors.

Implementing Sustainability

Sustainability has many aspects which makes it complex to implement. Part of the complexity stems from the involvement of both consumer perceptions and the environmental reality. Moreover, inherently, there is no clear unique path to sustainability.

To cope with the challenges of addressing sustainability we, at Polygreen, adopted two guidelines: to strictly follow ESG directives and to adhere to scientific evidence. 

Polygreen follows ISO, GMP and LCA practices in its facilities.

We meet 9 out of 17 of the UN’s SDG Goals

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Polygreen is actively targeting the SDGs by pursuing the following:

  • Eliminating disposable hygiene environmental hazard.

  • Feeding the world better with plants' “all-in-one” Superfood-Platform.

  • Providing babies and elderly people with Super Absorbent Wound dressing

The industries that Polygreen acts in

  • Hygiene

  • Agrochemistry

  • Wound Dressing

  • Packaging

  • Crop Protection

Hygiene
Image by Amber Martin

Polygreen's Sustainability Activity in Hygiene

We use the terminology of the EU Waste Management Hierarchy Directive (WMH) to describe how our hygiene products address the non-sustainability of current hygiene products.

  • Reduce - The directive to reduce in the WMH is the goal of consuming less resources.            This directive is given the highest priority since it implies a lower level of burden on all other directives. eSAP and our new assembly paradigm enable the reduction and elimination of pulp fluff and reduction of plastic weight while retaining absorbance of disposable medical/hygiene products. 

  • Recycle - The directive to recycle in the WMH is the goal of making use of a product at the end of its life. We make downstream recycling more feasible by reducing the variety of plastic in the hygiene products.

  • Landfill suitability is the WMH directive for products to be degradable in landfills. Our eSAP undergoes bio-degradation.

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Polygreen's Contribution to Sustainability in Agriculture

Polygreen's vision is to promote sustainability in all aspects in which superabsorbent polymers are used or can be used, and particularly so in agriculture. Polygreen's contribution to sustainability in agriculture is based on the properties of our environmental SAP (eSAP), which distinguish it from commonly used SAPs.​

Food security

Global warming is causing less and irregular precipitation. eSAP, helps plants cope with drought and adapt to precipitation fluctuations, thus enhancing crop yield and food security.

Desertification

Global warming expands desert boundaries which

affects food security. One way of coping with desertification is reforestation. eSAP can significantly contribute to such efforts due to its ability to improve water utilization. 

Greenhouse

Sustainable manufacturing

Polygreen's manufacturing has a low ecological footprint.

The manufacturing process is designed to have zero-waste so that the raw materials are fully utilised in the polymer process and there is no waste.

The manufacturing process applies Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) as part of our commitment to sustainability.

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Our eSAP versus the commonly used sodium polyacrylate SAP

Polyacrylate is a common material used in the plastics industry. Most of the traditional super adsorbent polymer industry is based on this material. When polyacrylate decomposes, it breaks down into units of its building blocks: acrylic acids, or other acrylates. Despite their excellent absorbency, acrylates remain in the soil as a microplastic and over time change the chemical and physical properties of the ground and are therefore not suitable for long-term use.

Moreover, some industries use acrylamide which is found to be a carcinogen.

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One of the components of Polygreen's eSAP is a biological material which enables easy spatial access to natural digestion that means the degradation passes beyond the building blocks to the atomic level (O, C, H),

Another advantage of Polygreen's eSAP is its friendliness to the skin.

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Sustainability knowledge center

What is Sustainability?

Human activity effects the environment through resource depletion and  contamination. Sustainability aims to avoid these effects so as to "leave a clean plate" for future generations. It is described as "meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs" (Brundtland, 1987).

The challenges of achieving sustainability

Part of the problem in attending to the long-term challenges of sustainability is the need to convey a sense of urgency to addressing long- term effects. A nice way of presenting this problem is provided in The World Counts.

 

Another difficulty in addressing sustainability is its multi-faceted scope: energy, waste, transportation, climate and many more aspects. Sustainability touches on almost every discipline and science.

 

The multitude of aspects of sustainability makes it difficult to identify the urgent issues

Image by Derek Oyen

What is the ESG?

ESG (Environmental, Social and corporate Governance) is a framework for evaluating  a firm’s collective conscientiousness for social and environmental factors. It is typically a score compiled from data collected regarding specific metrics related to intangible assets within the enterprise. 

What are the is SDGs?

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) are a collection of 17 interlinked goals designed to be a "blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all".

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The SDGs were set up in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly and are intended to be achieved by the year 2030. They are included in a UN Resolution called the 2030 Agenda or what is colloquially known as Agenda 2030.

Consumer Perception of “Sustainability”

Consumer perception of sustainability is often biased. Here are some examples:.

  • Cotton based Hygiene is cotton Green? 

  • Electric car  - is electric car really better? See here

  • Biodegradability – Is biodegradability is that important in sustainability?

LCA & ISO

What is a LCA?

A Life cycle assessment or LCA (also known as a life cycle analysis) is a methodology for assessing the environmental impacts associated with all the stages of the life cycle of a commercial product, process, or service. For instance, in the case of a manufactured product, environmental impacts are assessed from raw material extraction and processing (cradle), through the product's manufacture, distribution and use, to the recycling or final disposal of the materials composing it (grave).[1][2]

What is a LCA Study?

A LCA study involves a thorough inventory of the energy and materials that are required across the industry value chain of the product, process or service, and calculates the corresponding emissions to the environment.[2] A LCA thus assesses cumulative potential environmental impacts. The aim is to document and improve the overall environmental profile of the product.[2]

What is ISO?

Widely recognized procedures for conducting LCAs are included in the 14000 series of environmental management standards of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), in particular, in ISO 14040 and ISO 14044. ISO 14040 provides the 'principles and framework' of the Standard, while ISO 14044 provides an outline of the 'requirements and guidelines'. Generally, ISO 14040 was written for a managerial audience and ISO 14044 for practitioners.[3] As part of the introductory section of ISO 14040, LCA has been defined as the following:[4]

 Your Single-Use Plastic Ends Up Here

Plastic contamination

The world generates, annually, two billion tons of municipal solid waste. A lot of it is non-degradable plastic that is dumped in landfills or finds its way into rivers and seas.

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Waste Management is a large industry estimated at $35B in 2020 (excluding neighborhood pickup).  Waste is treated differently around the world but 79% of global waste ends up in landfill/open nature, (40% in OECD , 25% EU).

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Climate Change

Water scarcity

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  • Global warming endangers rain-fed agriculture (80% of cultivated land). 

  • Population growth and rising standards of living also contribute to a growing water scarcity expected by 2030 according to a UN report

eSAP enhances water efficiency

Global warming endangers rain-fed agriculture (80% of cultivated land). Our biodegradable super absorbent polymer (eSAP) enables

  • Smart, efficient and regulation-compliant utilization of water

  • Retention of soil quality.

  • Better utilisation of fertilizers and pesticides

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