The April edition of “one month – one member” highlights 3A Composites. It will mainly focus on their sustainability initiative MISSION: TOGETHER. RESPONSIBLE. and their product classification system, the FIVE-DOT-MISSION with regard to their polycarbonate products IMPEX® and IMPEX® MULTIWALL.
Indeed, as part of its corporate ecological commitment, summed up by the MISSION: TOGETHER. RESPONSIBLE., the company had decided to incorporate its products in the mission objectives and has created a system, the FIVE-DOT-MISSION, to classify them.
The five different categories in their FIVE-DOT-MISSION system indicate the factors with the greatest impact on sustainability. The intention is to offer their partners guidance with their purchasing decision-making and to provide a transparent system. The latter focusses on the use of materials, the CO2 content, the product life cycle and, of course, recycling – which is a topic of particular relevance for the 3A Composites’ products.
The FIVE-DOT-MISSION makes an assessment of each product on the basis of the five categories and awards points per category. The product is then assigned to one of the five colored DOTs. By this means, 3A Composites achieves a transparent, quick valuation logic which the company can also use to gauge product innovation and improvement.
The FIVE-DOT categories are: Biobased content, Recycled content, Fossil CO2 bound in the material, Product life cycle and Recyclability. As many as 3 points can be achieved in each of these categories, resulting in a maximum of 15 points. According to the total number of points achieved (1-15), the FIVE-DOT classification is based on a defined colour gradient.
As mentioned above, several of 3A Composites’ polycarbonate sheets products have been evaluated as part of the MISSION: TOGETHER. RESPONSIBLE. It is the case for the polycarbonate sheets IMPEX® and IMPEX® MULTIWALL.
IMPEX® is an extruded, virtually unbreakable polycarbonate sheet with excellent optical and mechanical properties. The product family currently achieves a FIVE-DOT classification of 6 points in total.
About the recycled content category, 3A Composites is already recovering and reusing its own production waste to create new material in the manufacture of IMPEX ® sheets. All raw materials used in the IMPEX® sheets comply with the requirements in the current version of the European Union's Chemicals Regulation (REACH). In particular, IMPEX® sheets are free of any of the substances listed in the current version of the ECHA Candidate List of Substances of Very High Concern (SVHC).
Regarding the product life cycle criteria, the IMPEX® sheets are made of polycarbonate, a durable thermoplastic material, which has excellent optical and mechanical properties. Polycarbonate sheets are extremely impact resistant and are virtually unbreakable under normal conditions of use. In addition, the sheets have an excellent resistance to weathering; even at very low or very high temperatures (-40°C to +135°C) they are extremely hard-wearing and resilient. These qualities make IMPEX® sheets ideal for long-term applications both indoors and (in the version featuring UV protection) outdoors.
As for recyclability, IMPEX® sheets can be sorted for recycling and reuse. As a thermoplastic, polycarbonate in its pure form is ideal for mechanical recycling.
The other polycarbonate product that has been evaluated as part of the FIVE-DOT-MISSION is the IMPEX® MULTIWALL, an extruded multi-wall polycarbonate sheet with high impact resistance. The product currently achieves a FIVE-DOT classification of 8 points in total.
For more information and details on this product and how it scores 8 points in total in the FIVE-DOT classification, please visit the dedicated webpage.
For more information, please visit www.display.3acomposites.com/sustainability/
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