In 2023 Prince Fibre, added Alexander van der Flier, Senior Manager at EY, to its Advisory Board. He is a sustainability and circularity specialist and has been added to support within Prince Fibre in meeting Prince Fibre’s sustainability goals.
The CO2 reduction plan Prince Fibre has set itself is to achieve a 50% CO2 reduction over the next 10 years. The year 2022 to 2032.
The steps we want to take are:
● Making the current CO2 footprint transparent within Prince Fibre.
● Gaining insight into the LCA values of all our product groups, we started with the main product group
● Fiberglass profiles
● Carbon profiles
● Bio composite profiles
● Profiles with print
Once we have a better understanding of the LCA values of our product groups, we can make further choices to achieve the goal of a 50% reduction of the CO2 footprint by 2032.
The R ladder of circularity plays an essential role within Prince Fibre in approaching the sustainability and circularity of materials such as glass and carbon composites. This ladder is a tool to rank different waste management and material reuse options, from most to least desirable.
The steps of the R-ladder are:
R0 – Refuse
R1 – Rethink
R2 – Reduce
R3 – Reuse
R4 – Repair
R5 – Refurbish
R6 – Remanufacture
R7 – Repurpose
R8 – Recycle
R9 – Recover
In the context of glass and carbon composites, we provisionally make a choice as to whichwere applied within Prince Fibre:
Refuse: Avoiding unnecessary use of composite materials whenever possible or choosing alternative, sustainable materials. Consider biocomposites and/or hybrid forms of using the various fibers.
Reduce (Reduce): Minimizing the use of composite materials through design optimization, requiring less material for the same application. By developing and modifying our recipes and reducing the fibers used or opting for hybrid solutions, we think we can achieve 50% of our goals.
Recycle (Recycling): Processing glass and carbon fiber composites into new materials. This is more technically challenging because of its mixed composition, but developments in this area, such as mechanical and chemical recycling methods, are making recycling increasingly feasible. By taking back manufactured profiles from our customers and processing them into recyclate, we see great added value in the future. With this solution, it is expected that we can use up to 25%-30% recyclate in newly produced profiles.
When applying the R-ladder to glass and carbon fiber composites at Prince Fibre, it is important to recognize that the complexity and mixed material use make recycling and reuse more challenging than with single materials. Innovations in design for disassembly, reuse and recycling technologies are essential at Prince Fibre to improve the circularity of these materials. By extending product life cycles and using resources more efficiently, glass and carbon fiber composites can contribute to a more sustainable future.
