CQ — Our circular solutions with a reduced carbon footprint

Plastics are the material of our time. Their excellent properties make them essential for mastering many global challenges — be it the mobility of the future, livable cities, or nutrition and medical care for the growing world population.

The downside of plastics: They are still largely made from fossil raw materials using non-renewable energies. Plus: Recycling solutions are not scaled up efficiently to bring plastic back into the loop.

We want to resolve these challenges. By offering a holistic portfolio of solutions that allow our customers and partners to move away from a linear approach and to materialize the Circular Economy together with us.

Circular Intelligence for our circular solutions

CQ is derived from “Circular Intelligence”, a smart approach to more sustainable materials, technologies, and services. Covestro solutions with the “CQ” label are living proof of our CE vision becoming reality. By using alternative raw materials and developing unique new recycling technologies and services, we showcase our Circular Intelligence, transforming the industry to achieve climate neutrality. One solution at a time:

• Currently, all CQ materials represent at least 25% alternative or recycled raw materials, either as components or through mass balance methodology.
• The products included under the CQ label enable the production of circular products using groundbreaking technologies such as chemical recycling. One example is our Evocycle^® CQ technology: it is used, for example, to break down soft foam mattresses into their original components.
• Today, CQ services focus on dematerialization: Imagio^® CQ offers solutions for digital sampling. They allow realistic digital visualizations of product designs — contributing to sustainability by significantly saving material.

Pioneering solutions for key Industries

By moving away from linear production and consumption, we not only want to reduce our own carbon footprint, but also help our customers in many key sectors on their way to a sustainable future. Because they can improve their environmental balances and at the same time fulfill the sustainability wishes of consumers.

In the long term, our goal is to provide a version of each product with a reduced carbon footprint. For example, a variant of our versatile high-performance plastic polycarbonate, which we manufactured from mass-balanced organic waste and residues and renewable energy, is already on the market. In addition, we offer the foam component MDI, produced in the same way and also with a reduced carbon footprint according to the cradle-to-gate method.