The series launched with the following:
- ALTUGLAS™ R-Life Extruded Acrylic Sheets – with a minimum of 75 percent mechanically recycled, reused PMMA scrap material
- ALTUGLAS™ R-Life Cast Acrylic Sheets – with a minimum 75 percent chemically recycled PMMA cast sheet
- ALTUGLAS™ R-Life Acrylic Resins – with both 50 percent and 80 percent chemically recycled monomer from PMMA waste
The materials can be used in a broad range of application areas in Retail/POS, Lighting, Interior Architecture, Furniture and Design, Building and Construction, and Transportation. "With ALTUGLAS™ R-Life we look at sustainability broadly – as any number of solutions that might enable a customer to achieve positive sustainability outcomes," said Aldo Zanetti, Global Sustainability Manager, Engineered Materials. "We plan for ALTUGLAS™ R-Life to be a growing and dynamic series; proven, with scientific tools such as LCA, to have a measurable environmental impact."
For each ALTUGLAS™ R-Life sustainable solution, the Global Warming Potential (GWP) was calculated through a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). By replacing fossil with sustainable content there is a reduction in GWP of 35 percent for cast sheets with 75 percent sustainable content and 53 percent for extruded sheets with 75 percent sustainable content, and 24 percent for resins with 50 percent sustainable content resins and 38 percent with 80 percent sustainable content. ALTUGLAS™ R-Life Extruded Acrylic Sheets is an ALTUGLAS™ CO2NET™ product with CO2 emissions reduction greater than 50 percent over its virgin, fossil-based equivalent.
Both chemically recycled ALTUGLAS™ R-Life Cast Acrylic Sheets and Acrylic Resins as well as mechanically recycled, reused ALTUGLAS™ R-Life Extruded Acrylic Sheets are processed with technology that assures the same mechanical, aesthetic, and optical properties of a fossil equivalent. The chemically recycling method used involves PMMA waste depolymerization where the material is converted to its original methyl methacrylate (MMA) monomer.
ALTUGLAS™ R-Life joins Trinseo's broad portfolio of sustainably-advantaged materials. These materials as well as Trinseo’s sustainability initiatives are included in the company's 2022 Corporate Sustainability released earlier this month. Trinseo is committed to solutions for plastic waste by partnering with the value chain, and developing and sharing innovative recycling technologies and approaches. Since its acquisition of Altuglas International the company has been a member of European Union initiatives MMAtwo, focused on constructing a novel PMMA recycling value chain, and REVOLUTION, an automotive industry led project to apply recycled PMMA and other plastics to electric vehicles. ALTUGLAS™ R-Life extruded sheets, resins, and compounds are produced at Trinseo's Rho plant, near Milan, Italy and ALTUGLAS™ R-Life cast sheets are made at the company’s Saint-Avold, France, and Brondeslev, Denmark locations.
