Metal soaps under the view point of sustainability—One vision

Abstract

Poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) products accompany us throughout our lives, from toys to potable water pipes. In many instances, this is enabled by the capacity of PVC to deliver benefits over a very long lifetime with barely diminished functional efficiency and operational reliability. However, people today are often misled by marketing claims such as products being “green,” “bio‐based,” or “environmentally friendly.” This willful or unintended misleading of public opinion is enabled by an often vague or imprecise understanding of what is meant by the term “sustainable.” The European PVC industry has recently published a renewed commitment to sustainability under the VinylPlus program . It is to progress and promote this ongoing commitment to sustainable development‐‐‐measures to make practical progress toward the goal of sustainability, which we decided to publish in this paper, in which we have sought to evaluate data relevant to sustainability challenges within the PVC industry and the societal lifecycle of the plastic. We have done this by applying a science‐based sustainability framework to evaluate a category of PVC additives that can make a significant contribution toward fully sustainable products. Metal soaps such as stearates, oleates, 12‐hydroxy stearates, laurates, octoates, and benzoates of lead, barium, calcium, magnesium, aluminum, zinc, and cadmium were and are partially still playing an important role in PVC applications. Owing largely to the ubiquity of calcium, magnesium, zinc, and aluminum in the natural environment, salts of these metals formed with organic acids already have a higher potential to become fully sustainable. J. VINYL ADDIT. TECHNOL., 23:125–134, 2017. © 2015 Society of Plastics Engineers