• Report sets out progress made in meeting its sustainability targets, set last year
• Report underlines the company’s contributions to circular solutions

INEOS Styrolution, the global leader in styrenics, published its third sustainability report today, which complies with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the acknowledged reporting standard on sustainability. The report is prepared in accordance with the core option of GRI’s Standards guidelines.

This latest report sheds light on INEOS Styrolution’s focus on a resource-efficient plastics model and the company’s drive towards circular solutions for polystyrene through chemical recycling projects based on depolymerisation technologies. Examples include

-        the “ReSolve” project funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research[1]

-        the cooperation with Agilyx for polystyrene recycling in the U.S.[2]

-        the strategic partnership with Pyrowave to recycle North American post-consumer polystyrene[3]

-        Cooperation in PlasticsEurope’s “Plastics 2030 – Voluntary Commitment”  to shape new sustainable solutions[4]

-        Cooperation in Styrenics Circular Solutions (SCS) to drive circular solutions for polystyrene.

The report also details the progress INEOS Styrolution has made in meeting its sustainability targets, set last year. In addition, last year, INEOS Styrolution undertook a focused materiality assessment involving key internal and external stakeholders. The assessment findings have been used to prioritise the sustainability topics in our report so that it responds to the company’s stakeholder needs and expectations.

“Since the introduction of our global sustainability programme in 2014, our aim has been to optimise our product portfolio to save energy and increase product yield for our customers and provide high quality, safe and functional solutions to enhance the daily comfort of consumers”, says Kevin McQuade, CEO INEOS Styrolution. “Due to the increasing global challenges society faces with regard to the end-of-life of plastics, we have expanded our focus to include emerging topics such as circular economy, prevention of pellet loss, and further reduction of our carbon emissions.”

He adds: “Sustainable styrenics products will support the shift to a circular economy. With more than 1,500 products and 2,000+ applications, we possess the reach and scale to positively impact our customers as well as consumers. But we cannot do it alone. Therefore, we aim to advance on our path of ‘Living Sustainability. Together’ in close collaboration with our stakeholders.”

The new report succeeds the 2016 GRI report, which resulted in a gold rating by EcoVadis[5], an independent assessor of corporate sustainability performance. The new report is the latest evolution of previous publications including the earlier GRI reports and a first qualitative report:

-        2014: First qualitative report, published in December 2015

-        2015: First quantitative report based on GRI G4 reporting guidelines, published in August 2016

-        2016: First quantitative report based on GRI G4 reporting guidelines introducing sustainability targets per area of the business, published in July 2017

-        2017: Second quantitative report based on GRI Standards reporting guidelines providing an update on the progress against defined sustainability targets, published in July 2018.