Circular economy iconAdvancing a Circular Economy

Through innovation and collaboration, Dow will help facilitate the world’s transition to a circular economy.

Measuring our progress

We are refining our strategies and scale our pipeline to deliver circular economy solutions by focusing on circular materials, technologies and value chain ecosystems.

Our circular economy principles

  • Dow will collaborate to implement six major projects that deliver solutions and advance the circular economy. Our key performance indicator is the number of projects implemented.

Recent highlights

  • Five Dow production sites received International Sustainability & Carbon Certification. The certification was awarded following a full independent, external audit to ensure product supply chains are fully traceable.
  • In 2021, we sold and launched 12 product grades of REVOLOOP™ resins, with applications ranging from rigid bottles and collation shrink to e-commerce bags and protective packaging.
  • In 2021, we launched the world’s first industrial-scale reactor for the chemical recycling of end-of-life mattresses in France with start-up of the RENUVA™ plant. When operating at full capacity, the plant will recycle polyurethane foam from up to 200,000 used mattresses per year.
  • Dow partnered with NOVA Chemicals, LyondellBasell and Sealed Air to establish the Closed Loop Circular Plastics Fund, with an initial fund size of $25 Million, which invests in scalable recycling technologies, equipment upgrades and infrastructure solutions.
  • In 2021, we teamed with Mura Technology, which has demonstrated that it can recycle all forms of plastic – including multi-layer, flexible plastics used in packaging, which are currently harder to recycle and often incinerated or sent to landfill.
  • Launched Dow AGILITY™ CE, the first post-consumer recycled product in our plastics circularity portfolio.
  • Named to Fortune’s 2019 Change the World list for use of recycled plastics in roads.

Recognition

SEAL (Sustainability, Environmental Achievement & Leadership) Award

In 2021, Dow was recognized with a SEAL (Sustainability, Environmental Achievement & Leadership) Award for our work with Circulate Capital and Lucro. Together, we invested in capacity expansion to take in more waste and develop disruptive post-consumer recycled (PCR) polyethylene film solutions in India. This collaboration is expected to divert 6,000 metric tons of waste from the environment, while fostering new economic opportunities in the next three years.