Vital to the sustenance of life, the fundamental elements of earth, wind, water, and fire together contribute to an ideal state of balance—a balance that is violently disrupted when, for example, fire breaks out.

Albemarle (Stand 6D61) is a specialty chemical solutions company based in the U.S. that has taken a new look at fire safety and flame retardants. The company has set up a new division called Earthwise, which represents a family of products that follows strict environmentally friendly standards, along with practicing green chemistry principles. Earthwise is a company-wide program that researches, develops, and markets the company’s green technologies to ensure the goals of non-bioaccumulation, low toxicity, recycle capability, and low carbon footprint are incorporated into the development of new products and the manufacture of current offerings. In order for a product to be introduced under the Earthwise label, it must exceed sustainability and eco-friendliness criteria set for existing commercial products. Those criteria include bioaccumulation, toxicity, recycle capability, carbon footprint and other critical environmental metrics.

Recently developed and soon to be marketed, the first Earthwise product comes from the fire safety and polymers group and is a recyclable, eco-friendly, brominated fire safety product called GreenArmor.  GreenArmor is scheduled to launch for commercial use in late 2010, and is suitable for E/E equipment applications.

The product is non-bioaccumulative and recyclable. It is also organically based rather than mineral-based. It is a polymer, which means the chemical is too large to be absorbed by the body or animal life.
The highly stable nature of the product lends itself to efficient recycling of the plastics it is used in, which helps to minimize the discharge of poisonous fumes to the environment during the product recycling phase. Electric and electronics equipment containing flame retardants are recycled in various ways, including mechanical recycling, feedstock recovery (for brominated flame retardant systems), and waste-to-energy recovery.

Mechanical recycling of plastics from E/E applications is growing in importance, and in many cases, fire safety treated product materials can simply be used again to make new products.

Obviously, the ability to maintain good flame retardancy after being recycled is a crucial factor in the success of this process. This first Earthwise product performed well in this area, even when the materials being recycled had been exposed to harsh environments for extended periods of time.