Sustainable Growth

Building a more circular future

In Syensqo our efforts extend beyond mitigating any negative impact of our expanding societies on the environment; we want to proactively foster positive change and uplift communities by driving material innovation and process transformation. Through our engineering, scientific and technological approaches, we want to address the urgent challenges our world faces, support sustainable growth, and promote innovation that enables circularity – in collaboration with other stakeholders. By doing so, we not only protect the environment but enable the green transition,  empower local communities, promote social equity, and enhance the wellbeing of society as a whole.

We develop cutting-edge solutions that are environmentally responsible and designed to benefit people and the planet. Whether that’s enabling carbon neutrality through green hydrogen, supporting circularity with biotechnology, developing innovative battery solutions to make e-mobility more energy-efficient, or creating lighter, faster, and stronger thermoplastic composites.

How we enable sustainable growth

We incorporate sustainability into our business decision-making process - driving innovation projects, investments and partnerships. We work with our suppliers to ensure responsible practices throughout the supply chain. We do this by focusing on three main areas:

Promoting the use of our sustainable solutions

A sustainable solution is defined by Syensqo’s Sustainable Portfolio Management (SPM) tool as a product in a given application that makes a greater social and environmental contribution to the customer’s performance and, at the same time, demonstrates a lower environmental impact in its production phase.

Our Research and Innovation also uses the SPM (Sustainable Portfolio Management ) framework to consider every aspect of the product process and help our portfolio decision making.

Circularity 

Our portfolio of products and solutions help enable circularity for our customers, focusing on resource efficiency, durability, and enabling recyclability.

Resource efficiency 

Where possible, we are transitioning to bio-based and renewable raw materials, and prioritizing responsible sourcing throughout our value chain. Our innovation pipeline is focused on developing new processes and technologies that facilitate the efficient use of raw materials and other critical resources, such as water and energy.

Explorers for sustainability

At Syensqo, we're explorers and problem-solvers. And while we’re very much aware that environmental progress is an ongoing process, we’re proud of our achievements so far.

Our development of green hydrogen plays an important part in our journey towards carbon neutrality. In Europe, we’re scaling up the production of Aquivion, whose beneficial properties include impressive thermal and chemical stability, which enables high-efficiency production of green hydrogen.

We’re also proud of our biotechnology solutions, which focus on increasing the use of renewable carbon, developing biodegradable technologies that enable eco-friendly end-of-life practices, and transforming feedstock into valuable molecules.

Additionally, our green solvents provide less hazardous and more circular solutions for the agricultural market. We offer agrochemical formulators the best solvent performance with the safest toxicity and exoticity profiles.

Other examples include the creation of lighter, faster, and stronger thermoplastic composites. This enables us to scale manufacturing processes in the aerospace market and design flexible, high-performing solutions for the energy sector – solutions that help drive decarbonization. It also allows us to improve lightweighting and performance in the automotive industry by offering higher motor efficiency and power density for electric vehicles. 

Supporting emission reductions

According to the American Cleaning Institute and The Sustainability Consortium (ACI, TSC Coldwatersaves.org), a household in the US can cut its CO₂ emissions by 1000 pounds (~4500 kg of CO₂) per year if they wash two out of four loads in cold water.¹ But many people remain concerned that washing at a lower temperature would impact cleanliness and appearance. Products like our Repel-O-Tex® range of high-performing polymers for laundry detergents enable cold-water washing, delivering the same results at temperatures as low as 20°C.

Holding ourselves accountable

We want to make sure the solutions we offer customers are environmentally responsible – and that we have the evidence to back it up. To ensure this, we have developed the Sustainable Portfolio Management (SPM) tool, a fact-based, future-oriented, and customer-centric aid that helps us embed environmental and societal responsibility across all our key business decisions. We use it to perform annual assessments of our existing portfolio, research and innovation investments.

SPM is recognized as being consistent with the Product Sustainability Assessment (PSA) framework created by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD). It’s also considered a key strategic tool for decision-makers, not just by Syensqo but also by other leading organizations. Additionally, SPM is aligned with the European Commission’s “Safe and Sustainable by Design” initiative, which was created to support safe and sustainable innovation of chemicals and materials.

We also work with charities such as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which is a network of industry leaders at the forefront of the circular economy transition. Syensqo is a strategic partner of the foundation, committed to taking action to drive systemic change and enable the move toward a circular economy that benefits people, businesses, and the natural world.

_{1. The average household in the US does ~400 loads per year.}