ENSO RESTORE RL<\/a>, being pioneered by a handful of manufacturers, launched this summer after a roughly two-year research-and-development process.<\/p>\nENSO, which primarily focuses on mitigating the environmental impacts of plastics, took a detour into rubber technology after receiving multiple requests from industry players looking to make their products more environmentally friendly, according to Teresa Clark, ENSO\u2019s vice president of product development.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlastics aren\u2019t the only thing that cause a problem,\u201d Clark said. \u201cA lot of that (rubber) stuff gets thrown into a landfill, because it\u2019s not recycled. For example, there\u2019s some recycling of tires, but the majority of tires are still just disposed of.\u201d<\/p>\n
ENSO RESTORE comes in pellet, powder and liquid forms. The treatment is applied to products while they are being manufactured, but its effects don\u2019t kick in until after the products are thrown away.<\/p>\n
\u201cSay someone is making a rubber band. The huge value of it is it doesn\u2019t impact the use of the product \u2014 it\u2019s still going to be just as stretchy, and it\u2019s still going to last just as long,\u201d Clark said. \u201cThe microorganisms in the waste environment just recognize it differently than the traditional, non-treated rubber later on.\u201d<\/p>\n
An independent lab test showed certain rubber products treated with Restore biodegraded about 17 percent in the first 20 days after disposal, while untreated products didn\u2019t biodegrade at all, according to the company.<\/p>\n
The biggest commercial user of RESTORE RL so far is an international manufacturer of rubber-gloves, according to Clark. Though she declined to name names, she said makers of rubber bands and products with \u201celastic-type fibers\u201d also are interested in using the product, though most are still in the trial stage.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile the plastic industry has had a lot of pressure to move environmental, the rubber industry, for the most part, has kind of flown under that radar,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re beginning to realize it\u2019s just as important for all of our materials to be environmentally sensitive.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read the original AZCentral.com article: http:\/\/www.azcentral.com\/community\/mesa\/articles\/20131018east-mesa-firms-new-productbiodegrades-synthetic-rubber.html<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Maria Polletta The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Oct 18, 2013 10:08 AM East Mesa company ENSO Plastics has developed a treatment for synthetic-rubber products that will enable quicker decomposition in landfills. ENSO RESTORE RL, being pioneered by a handful of manufacturers, launched this summer after a roughly two-year research-and-development process. ENSO, which primarily focuses […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2214,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2294","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2294"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2296,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2294\/revisions\/2296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2214"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ensoplastics.com\/theblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}