Michelin, the tyres manufacturing behemoth, announced its sustainability target at the start of 2021, stating that by 2030, 50% of its tyres will be produced with sustainable materials, with the goal of reaching 100% by 2050.
Michelin, in the process of heading towards its goals, has collaborated with Carbios, a French biochemistry company, to develop a technology that will depolymerize plastic through an enzymatic recycling process.
The method enables the use of plastic waste such as PET bottles as an ingredient in the manufacturing of tyres, Michelin mentioned.
The process of de-polymerization can be used for recycling and, thus, transforming all the PET waste into high tenacity fibers, eventually satisfying all the specification requirements of Michelin for making tyres.
Nicolas Seeboth, the director of Polymer Research at Michelin expressed their proud moment for being first in line for producing and testing the recycled fibers that would go into manufacturing tyres.
Nicolas added that “reinforcements were made from colored bottles and recycled using the enzymatic technology of our partner, Carbios.
Such high-tech strengthening’s have shown their capacity to offer performance that is the same as that of the petroleum industry.
Michelin claimed that it could recycle nearly three billion plastic bottles into high-tenacity plastic fibres, which would be used to make tyres in the future. The technology is currently being pilot-tested by Carbios and it says that by September 2021 it will start a demonstration plant in Clermont-Ferrand, its headquarters.
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