Millikens purposeful collaborations

As business globally looks to address mega trends such as climate change, sustainable supply chains and consumption it has become obvious that collaborations are key. No one company or industry can take on these challenges alone.

That’s why Milliken has established purposeful collaborations with dozens of valuable partners across the industry and policy arenas that are already helping to advance sustainable solutions and the plastics circular economy. These partnerships are developing infrastructure and technology towards sustainability and circularity as well as helping to create the right policy environments for implementation.

Policy Partnerships for Sustainability

Milliken is involved in many collaborative efforts to enhance sustainability and a circular economy. On display and in talks at K 2022 we highlighted our policy partnerships focused on recycling, such as with the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, a global non-profit committed to ending plastic waste in the environment. We lead The Alliance to End Plastic Waste’s Design for Circularity thematic expert group, which aims to increase the circularity of plastic usage through enhanced front-end product and packaging design solutions.

We’re also a member of The Recycling Partnership, which puts private dollars to work in communities across the United States of America with the aim of unlocking the environmental and economic benefits of recycling and a circular economy. At Milliken, we are active in the group’s Polypropylene Recycling Coalition, and we fully support the group’s ongoing efforts to foster public-private partnerships and drive positive change at every step of the circularity process. On top of that, Milliken & Company’s Charitable Foundation and the Walmart Foundation each provided initial funding for The Recycling Partnership’s Center for Sustainable Behavior & Impact, which focuses on:

• Gaining a deeper understanding of consumer barriers and sentiments toward recycling
• Scientifically testing different types of solutions to determine the most effective and scalable tactics that improve recycling behavior with different populations in the United States of America
• Creating a playbook and accompanying toolkit to make best practices and key insights available to national, state, and local recycling leaders

Another collaboration showcased at K 2022 is HolyGrail 2.0, the Digital Watermarks Project, which aims to advance the accurate sorting of plastics for recycling. The Project is testing the use of barcodes that are imperceptible to the human eye, but detectable with a camera for computing devices, to add a digital recycling passport to packaging. Once scanned, it can help direct a package to the appropriate recycling process for its best next life.

Milliken also works with GO!PHA, an organization that aims to advance the use of biodegradable polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHA) in single-use packaging. We will bring our expertise in polymer chemistry to help improve the processing, performance, aesthetics and other important attributes of PHA.

And in China, Milliken works closely with the Green Recycled Plastic Supply Chain Joint Working Group led by the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Association and China National Resources Recycling Association. The 16-member group works closely with the entire value chain, including global brands, retailers, material suppliers, industrial associations, and other organizations that share its vision to build the plastic recycling economy. These efforts encompass design for recycling

guidelines, certification schemes, traceability, and the incorporation of recycled plastics into new applications.

Industry Partnerships for Sustainability

Working with industrial partners is also a crucial piece of the puzzle towards a circular plastics economy. One of these cutting-edge partnerships is with PureCycle Technologies to advance the closed-loop recycling of PP resins. Our shared goal is tackling waste management and advancing the circular economy transition.

Our latest joint effort involves the launch of a concentrate for PP based on PureCycle‘s recycled PP carrier containing our Millad® NX® 8000 ECO, resulting in a fully sustainable PP concentrate that will produce parts free of odor. This will enable 100% recycled content and, when used in combination with PureCycle’s recycled polypropylene (rPP), produces a formulation that has approximately a 35% lower carbon footprint (GHG) than virgin PP.

At the same time, our partnership with European recycling leaders EREMA and PreZero is producing polypropylene from previously sorted, washed and shredded post-consumer material. Our Hyperform® HPN® performance additives upgrade the recycled PP by improving the material’s physical properties while also reducing the cycle time needed to process it. Additionally, these additives also provide for better dimensional control and crystallization stability during the post-injection molding period.

With more than fifteen years’ experience distributing biobased raw materials Helian Polymers develops PHA-based materials to help customers produce sustainable products. Milliken is sharing its chemical expertise with Helian to help improve PHA polymers to boost the transition from plastics to PHA based solutions.

Highlighted at K 2022 in one of our TechTalks we are also collaborating with ExxonMobil to combine our DeltaMax® performance modifiers with their Exact™ plastomers in a formulation that delivers improved impact while maintaining stiffness. As an added bonus, it also results in better melt flow for faster injection molding.

In collaboration with the Huhtamaki Group we have developed a more sustainable, mono-material laminate for use in tubes targeting cosmetics, toothpaste, and other personal-care applications. The high-density polyethylene (HDPE) tube resulting from this joint development work was produced using Huhtamaki laminates optimized with our UltraGuard™ Solutions technology.

For a project with Italian chocolatier Ferrero Rocher, we custom-designed more than 20 formulations to find the right box made from PP, while with ITC Packaging we have also reduced the weight of plastic cups and containers at the same time as improving their recyclability through a mono-material eco-design. 

We’re also proud of our collaboration with Re-mall. While many single-use plastic products serve a very useful purpose, without consistent and reliable circular solutions for these materials, massive amounts of waste are created, and their benefits often get overlooked. One of the best solutions to the problem is to upcycle those waste plastics into durable items with a long lifespan. And that is exactly what Re-mall is doing. With the help of our Millad NX 8000 ECO clarifier and ClearTint™ polymeric colorants waste take-out boxes, the largest single use PP waste stream in China by far, are turned into clear, fresh-looking items such as storage boxes and frisbees.

APC Packaging meanwhile sought to create a mono-material dropper and bottle system that would compete against traditional glass bottles. Using PP enhanced with Millad NX 8000 for blow molding allowed APC to challenge the clarity of glass, and together we have helped the transition to sustainable packaging.

Purposeful collaboration for a better future

Many of the challenges we face, including climate change and sustainable supply chains towards circularity are too big to be tackled by one company or organization alone. Partnerships are key to finding innovative solutions and driving cutting-edge change.

Milliken has always worked in collaboration across the value chain to help unlock the power of the private sector to address these challenges. Our partnerships will only grow as we incubate more innovation and bring new solutions to market.