Our Commitment

Environmental Stewardship

Renewable Raw Materials

Green Chemistry

Greener Alternatives for Customers

Water Management Programs

Environmental Performance

A Greener Mindset

Greener Alternatives for Customers

With green chemistry as a basis, Hercules' products are providing customers with numerous advantages, including safe use and disposal of products, energy efficiency in manufacturing, improved regulatory compliance, odor reduction, and recyclability.

In the regulated industries of food, personal care, and pharmaceuticals, most of our products are derived from natural materials, such as cellulose, a label-friendly alternative to petroleum-based products, making for easier consumer acceptance. Cellulosics and other products have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) stemming from their use in products that are consumed or come in close contact with the skin.  Additionally, all facilities producing food and pharma grades adhere to the FDA’s quality standards for Good Manufacturing Practice.

For more than 50 years, Aqualon’s premium cellulosic polymers have been added to medicines as an excipient—an inactive ingredient—to give them the form, consistency, or other characteristics desired by the pharmaceutical manufacturer. They are widely used for tablet binding, modified release, rheology control, and film coating. The fact that Aqualon products are specified for use in this highly regulated application reflects their purity and safety.

Similarly, Aqualon cellulosics are extensively and safely used in personal care items, where they are applied next to the skin, on the scalp, and in oral care. They are a key ingredient in food, where they are specified by food scientists and manufacturers for their functional properties: stabilizing foams, adding high quality soluble fiber, providing binding and adhesive strength, imparting thickening and mouthfeel properties, allowing suspensions and rheology control, increasing water retention and shelf-life, aiding film formation, and emulsifying liquids.

Energy Efficiency

Not only do these products help customers’ products perform better, they also have benefits for energy use and efficiency: 

• Aquarius coating systems, a family of dry and fully formulated film coatings for pharmaceuticals, help customers maximize production efficiency, including faster throughput and reduced labor and energy costs compared with conventional coatings.

• Culminal methylcellulose (MC) bonds rigid-foam insulation to the basic wall structure in construction, a multi-layered building approach known as Exterior Insulation and Finish Systems. These components are architecturally designed and installed as a system, improving energy efficiency.  

Within PTV, products and programs have been developed specifically to minimize the impact of pulp and paper mill operations on the environment. By improving production yield and use of recycled content, we help them use less forestry resources. Our water management programs help mills meet their discharge permit requirements, use less water, and control odors. Other Hercules products and technologies improve production efficiencies enabling mills to lower their energy usage. By developing alternative raw materials, we are helping customers remove hazardous solvents from their processes. Our field sales experts work with mill personnel every day to help ensure their manufacturing processes produce quality paper products without compromising water or air quality or have an otherwise harmful effect on consumers or the environment.
 

PTV Applications and Research Laboratory, Helsingborg, Sweden

• Kymene wet strength technology has set the standard in paper manufacturing since its development in the 1950s by Hercules researcher Dr. Gerald Keim. Hercules continues to build on Keim’s pioneering work in paper wet strength resins by making the Kymene product line more environmentally friendly—reducing levels of absorbable organically bound halogens (AOX) to minimize human exposure while improving its wet strength efficiency. Today, a third-generation product, Kymene G3 X-Cel, uses an innovative biodehalogenation process to convert chlorinated byproducts into carbon dioxide and salt, meeting the stringent requirements of the European regulatory agencies for food-contact paper. Two European plants are currently using this biodehalogenation process to manufacture Kymene G3 X-Cel. Another product, Kymene 217LX lowers AOX levels in finished paper towels and mill effluent water.

• Spectrum XD3899 biocide replaces longer lasting and more toxic synthetic organic biocides with a more effective material that readily degrades to harmless salts in the papermaking process. Biocide reformulations have significantly reduced volatile organic compound (VOC) emissions.

• Hercules manufactures one of the most environmentally favorable slow-release fertilizers in the marketplace today for the world's leading marketer of branded consumer lawn and garden products. Unlike traditional fertilizers, which dissolve on contact with water, microbiological activity helps ensure slow release, making it less likely that high amounts of nitrogen will wash into waterways and environmentally sensitive areas.

• Hercules is a major producer of the specialty synthetic lubricant used in environmentally friendly refrigeration systems that are replacing hydrochlorofluorocarbons, or HCFCs, which are believed to play a role in ozone depletion. Hercules also makes synthetic lubricants that are more biodegradable than traditional mineral oils and that allow for longer drain times in most applications.

• Dimension L1700S converting additive, introduced in July 2007, uses an environmentally friendly and biologically active material for making tissues that help consumers maintain clean, odor-free, and efficient septic tank systems. These products are especially useful for campgrounds, state parks, rural communities, and commercial establishments.

• ProSoft X-Cel tissue softener and debonding technology provides tissue producers with biodegradable alternatives to traditional softeners. It has an exceptional environmental profile and can be used by all tissue grades, allowing stringent regulatory and environmental targets to be achieved. 

Recycling

Aqualon’s products are largely nontoxic and biodegradable; as such, they don’t pose significant hazards for use or shipment. Many products are sold in solid form.  This makes shipping more efficient. The solid products are almost entirely sold in biodegradable and recyclable paper bags. Production processes typically result in minimal waste, with most of the raw material incorporated into the finished product.

PTV products are helping paper mills step up their use of recycled fiber by addressing problems that can occur in processing, such as the rise in organic contaminants called pitch and stickies and also loss of paper strength.

• DeTac pitch and stickies control technology helps mill operators reduce or eliminate deposits, with fewer breaks and defects in the sheets. Protein-based DeTac products are made from renewable milk proteins, providing a cost- and performance-effective way to manage contaminants and decrease the use of solvents containing VOCs in the washing process. An active R&D program is underway to use renewable cellulosics as yet another approach.

• Because recycled fiber is weaker than virgin fiber, Hercobond and other strength technologies help customers meet their performance requirements.

Another product line that has recycling benefits is Scripset SMA resins, used in combination with starch to produce a water-based adhesive that adheres labels to glass. During a mild alkaline wash in the recycling process, the adhesive loosens its grip and the labels are easily removed.

All trademarks of Hercules Incorporated or its affiliates appear in italics. The exception is Responsible Care and essential₂, which are registered trademarks of the American Chemistry Council.