Proactive collaboration towards

a circular economy

 
 
 

Leveraging partnerships and collaborating along the value chain

As a leader in healthcare packaging, we actively seek ways to enable companies along the value chain to adopt recycling methods that divert healthcare packaging waste—not only DuPont™ Tyvek® but other plastic waste—from incineration and landfilling, with the goal of driving towards circularity in the longer term. We know that this requires a better understanding of the barriers across the value chain, as well as collaboration to overcome them.

That’s why we are leveraging our partnerships with advanced recyclers and industry organizations, and collaborating with sterile packaging manufacturers (SPMs), medical device manufacturers (MDMs) and healthcare facilities to help move the value chain toward a circular economy as quickly as possible. 

 
 
 
 
 
 

Adopting a lifecycle approach

Due to the complexity of recycling multi-material packaging used at healthcare facilities and the current waste management infrastructure, most sterile packaging waste is either incinerated or landfilled. 

Advanced recycling, also known as chemical recycling, converts mixed plastic waste streams into their original building blocks, feedstocks for new chemicals and plastics, specialty polymers and other valuable products. It will play an increasingly important role as the healthcare industry moves away from a linear “take-make-dispose” model and adopts a lifecycle approach to plastics waste management.

 
 
 

Collaborating to advance post-industrial waste circularity

In 2021, we forged a Tyvek®-converter-advanced recycler partnership to better enable closed-loop utilization of plastic waste generated during packaging production. This collaboration underscores our commitment to achieving circularity in healthcare. We expect this is the first of many such partnerships.