Intelligence and community for the low-carbon commerce era
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Intelligence and community for the low-carbon commerce era
An overview of the Flue2Chem program, courtesy of the SCI
Unilever, Procter & Gamble, and Reckitt, along with other industrial players in the UK representing a £73 billion sector announced Flue2Chem, a collaboration to help the UK reach its net zero target by converting industrial waste gases into sustainable materials for consumer products. The SCI (Society of Chemical Industry) and 13 participating organizations have received funding for a two-year program to develop a new value chain to convert industrial waste gases into sustainable materials for consumer products, including £2.68 million from Innovate UK.
Fossil feedstocks from coal, oil, and gas are used to produce various consumer goods, including electronics, cosmetics, and cleaning products, contributing about 2.6 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions globally each year.
Ian Howell, Unilever’s Home Care Science & Technology R&D Director and Chair of SCI’s SMCP Group said:
‘This is a game-changing opportunity to accelerate action and rewire the chemicals value chain to be less reliant on fossil fuels. It’s a bold ambition and one that, at Unilever, we have been publicly calling for action over the last two years. No single company can do this alone, so to have the power of 15 manufacturers and academics marks a significant step forward not only for the UK, but globally too.’
Separately, Coca-Cola Europacific Partners (CCEP) announced a partnership with two additional universities to further research into carbon capture. CCEP is the world’s largest independent Coca-Cola bottler.
In 2022, Coca-Cola announced plans to expand carbon capture and explore new methods by partnering with the University of California, Berkeley (UCB). Now CCEP has signed agreements with the University of Twente (UT) in the Netherlands and Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV) in Tarragona, Spain, to intensify research efforts. Both universities will primarily focus on developing innovative ways to convert carbon dioxide into essential sugars for soft drink carbonation and as a crucial component in synthetic fuels for powering facilities.
