US' CovationBio reinforces commitment to contribute to sustainability

Based on a review of the company’s baseline performance in the four priority areas, the 2022 report offers a high-level assessment of CovationBio’s performance on safety, climate, circularity, and life on land, while laying the groundwork for actions that further support the company’s values and mission to make high-performance bio-based materials accessible to all. 

“Proactively releasing a sustainability report within the first seven months of establishing our new company is a huge milestone,” said CovationBio CEO Dr Michael Saltzberg. “For more than 20 years and prior to the launch of CovationBio, we dedicated ourselves to the mission to become a world leader in providing sustainable and high-performance biomaterials solutions. Sustainability is at the core of everything we do. This report carefully and transparently explains our sustainability commitments and our company’s and products’ progress towards those commitments.”

CovationBio is dedicated to making meaningful, measurable change. The report details the company’s status and progress in its first seven months and identifies opportunities for it to strengthen its sustainability efforts.

In 2022, CovationBio maintained its focus on safety and completed its first seven months as a newly formed company with zero injuries requiring treatment beyond first aid among contract partners and CovationBio personnel. In the Process Safety Management (PSM) arena, the company had zero Tier I incidents. However, operations experienced Tier II events and environmental deviations. A cross-sectional group, which includes the Global Environmental, Health, and Safety (EHS) team, is determining the root cause and contributing factors to such incidents with the goals of eliminating recurrence and achieving the zero incidents, as per the report.

CovationBio’s three product lines contain biobased material derived from annually renewable plant resources. BIO-PDO products, Susterra propanediol and Zemea propanediol, are 100 per cent bio-based and Sorona polymer is 37 per cent bio-based. A cross-functional team is currently investigating the state of technology to create Sorona polymer entirely from annually renewable and/or recycled resources. CovationBio is also actively updating the life cycle assessment (LCA) for Sorona polymer, Susterra propanediol, and Zemea propanediol.

As of the end of 2022, all CovationBio sites sourced their electricity from the grid, and the local mixes include between 6.5 per cent and 13.7 per cent renewables. Manufacturing locations rely on traditional fossil resources for process energy requirements. Planning is underway to move towards a higher fraction of renewable electricity.

The report highlighted that CovationBio is creating a plan to reduce site direct emissions and the footprint of purchased energy. From self-assessments, CovationBio reported a total of 94 thousand metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually from their production facilities and purchased electricity. The company has already implemented work-streams investigating low to zero GHG options for electricity and steam at the site to significantly reduce site GHG emissions. CovationBio is also committed to working with organisations such as the Renewable Carbon Initiative (RCI) to support defossilizaton of the materials industry.

To promote the sustainable use of land-based resources, CovationBio announced a partnership with Truterra in 2022. This farmer-led programme was established to improve stewardship of agricultural land in the United States. CovationBio has 49,904 acres of land in the United States enrolled with Truterra, which is the land required to grow 100 per cent of the corn feedstock used to make Susterra propanediol, Zemea propanediol, and Sorona polymer. Truterra supports farmers in the adoption of agricultural practices that can improve soil health, increase crop yields, and decrease fertilizer use, among other key regenerative agricultural methods.

“We want to continue to improve our own sustainability position and that of the entire materials industry as we grow our business. This led us to thoughtfully integrate our sustainability programme with our business strategy,” said CovationBio sustainability leader Lauren Johnson. “Although CovationBio is a new name in the world, our team—our people, our products—has been in the business of more sustainable materials for almost 20 years. Our products are designed to be bio-based, sustainable, and scalable. This means we at CovationBio are not new to biomaterials, we are reinvigorated.”

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (RR)