Trinseo announced its new series of sustainably-advantaged materials for the European marketplace -- ALTUGLAS™ R-Life Acrylics. ALTUGLAS™ R-Life is an umbrella brand that will include chemically and mechanically recycled, reused, and bio-based polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) for cast and extruded sheets, resins, and compounds. The series launched with the following: ALTUGLAS™ R-Life Extruded Acrylic Sheets – with a minimum of 75% mechanically recycled, reused PMMA scrap material; ALTUGLAS™ R-Life Cast Acrylic Sheets – with a minimum 75% chemically recycled PMMA cast sheet, ALTUGLAS™ R-Life Acrylic Resins – with both 50% and 80% chemically recycled monomer from PMMA waste.

The materials can be used in a broad range of application areas in Retail/POS, Lighting, Interior Architecture, Furniture and Design, Building and Construction, and Transportation. For each ALTUGLAS™ R-Life sustainable solution, the Global Warming Potential (GWP) was calculated through a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA). By replacing fossil with sustainable content there is a reduction in GWP of 35% for cast sheets with 75% sustainable content and 53% for extruded sheets with 75% sustainable content, and 24% for resins with 50% sustainable content resins and 38% with 80% sustainable content.

ALTUGLAS™ R-Life Extruded Acrylic Sheets is an ALTUGLAS™ CO2NET™ product with CO2 emissions reduction greater than 50% over its virgin, fossil-based equivalent. Both chemically recycled ALTUGLAS™ R-Life Cast Acrylic Sheets and Acrylic Resins as well as mechanically recycled, reused ALTUGLAS™ R-Life Extruded Acrylic Sheets are processed with technology that assures the same mechanical, aesthetic, and optical properties of a fossil equivalent. The chemically recycling method used involves PMMA waste depolymerization where the material is converted to its original methyl methacrylate (MMA) monomer.