Evonik has reached a settlement with the US EPA for exceeding permitted emission limits of ethylene oxide and ethylene glycol at its speciality surfactants facility in Reserve, Louisiana. Both are regulated as hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) under the Clean Air Act.

This followed an inspection on 18 April 2033 and an information request on 27 September, which concluded that emissions had exceeded the permitted levels. Evonik shut down the operations from 18 November until 3 February 2023, when it installed a temporary flare that can remove 98% or more of HAP emissions.

The use of renewable carbon from wood to produce biobased products will have a crucial role, argues Martin Ledwon, VP of sustainability at UPM Biorefining

Paul Vanden Branden, director and product manager at laboratory equipment supplier SciMed, examines the potential of supercritical CO₂ to supplant environmentally harmful solvent in extractions and separations

The environmental and financial challenges associated with widely used organic solvents are severe. To reach sustainability goals, laboratories around the world must wean themselves off these long relied-upon hydrocarbons and pursue greener alternatives.

Within the Restrictions Roadmap under the EU’s Chemicals Strategy for Sustainability, ECHA has released its Regulatory Strategy for Flame Retardants (FRs). This refers mainly to halogenated FRs and organophosphorus-based FRs, which make up about 70% of the organic FR market.

The strategy identified aromatic brominated FEs (BFRs) as candidates for EU-wide restriction on five classes of aromatic BFRs that are already or will be confirmed to be persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic, or very persistent and very bioaccumulative, or identified as substances of very high concern.

An EU-wide project by ECHA’s Enforcement Forum carried out in 2021 has found that most users of substances of commonly controlled very high concern (SVHCs), mainly SMEs, already comply with the authorisation requirement to control risks.

The authorities of all 28 member countries undertook 690 inspections at 516 companies, mostly SVHCs. The most common SVHCs checked were chromium trioxide and strontium chromate, which are used mainly in surface treatment and chrome plating.

Lanxess has announced the development of the Product Carbon Footprint Engine, which takes data from its various business units and automatically calculates cradle-to-gate greenhouse gas emissions for their products. This includes production, product-specific emissions related to raw materials, energy, operating materials, and transport and emissions from waste disposal.

Sumitomo Chemical, Maruzen Petrochemical and Mitsui Chemicals have agreed to study the feasibility of collaborative projects to achieve carbon neutrality at the Keiyo Coastal Industrial Complex in Chiba. This is part of climate change targets all three have developed individually.

The initiative will mainly comprise measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, such as diversifying feedstocks, using biomass, new chemical recycling and material recycling technologies, converting to new kinds of fuels and the renewal of associated infrastructure.