Bethesda, MD -- The Adhesive and Sealant Council will partner with the American Standards and Testing Materials (ASTM) to begin defining sustainability via consensus driven industry dialogue beginning in the fall of 2011. This effort is a direct outcome of the Councils first ever Sustainability Summit, held recently in Rosemont, IL.

The Sustainability Summit was produced in partnership with ASTM and drew 86 attendees from across the adhesives and sealants supply chain. The Summit featured three keynote speakers, three market segment panels with 16 different speakers, and industry discussion groups that focused on one key industry trend: sustainability.

"The goal of the Councils Sustainability Summit was to create industry dialogue, followed by action-oriented next steps," reports Steve Duren, Director of Membership at ASC. "The sessions explored all facets of sustainability and allowed ample opportunity for discussion and debate as the industry collaborates to establish baseline understanding of what sustainability is all about."

The 1.5 day event featured an opening session where Dr. Bob Peoples of the Green Chemistry Institute (GCI) shared business perspectives on green chemistry and forecasted the opportunity for industry growth in this area through 2020. "Global chemical industry leaders recognize the fundamental shift beginning to take place as we move toward a sustainable bio-based enterprise in the 21st century," noted Peoples. "The ASC membership is among the early adopters and will be well rewarded for their strategic thinking."

The core of the summit featured three industry oriented panels where a total of 16 industry experts shared thoughts and ideas on how sustainability impacted the transportation, building and construction and packaging market sectors.

"The panels allowed industry leaders to share knowledge and perspectives on the future direction they feel sustainability will take," added Duren. "The panels set up the discussion sessions that followed where all of the 86 attendees could debate the future of sustainability in smaller breakout groups and begin to form a reasonable action plan for industry using both ASC and ASTM platforms to implement initiatives."

One key feature of the Sustainability Summit was its focus on the international nature of sustainability. Dr. Hermann Onusseit of Henkel provided a European perspective as a key note speaker. His remarks were on behalf of FEICA, the leading European trade association serving the adhesives and sealant sector. Onusseit clearly identified that adhesives and sealants are "enablers" of value and a key element to any assembly or finished good. He emphasized the need for harmonization with data, terminology and stressed the importance of standard alignment. Dr. Onusseit recognized that EPDs (Environmental Product Declarations) will be the trend of the future in the area of sustainability.

"The ASC Sustainability Summit was the very beginning of a roadmap that will help deliver value to ASC members and the industry at large," noted Glenn Frommer, president of ADCO Products, Inc and ASC Chairman. "I was impressed with the speakers and discussions, but also for the focus on action where it was clearly expected that ASC/ASTM working together will advance the sustainability dialogue and focus on definitions and terminology."

The primary outcome of the Sustainability Summit was a desire on the part of attendees to focus time and effort on industry definitions for sustainability. As Ken Yarosh, Global Service Line Manager and Chairman of ASTM C24 for Seals and Sealants, of Dow Corning put it, "The Sustainability Summit was a highly informative roundtable of key industry stakeholders that will help to shape terminology and standards development in ASTM C-24 Committee on Building Seals and Sealants for years to come."

ASC will partner with ASTM to determine a calendar of events, focusing on terminology development and webinars that will support this effort.

"We appreciate the strong industry support for this first time event, and look forward to continuing the strong dialogue within the ASC Technical and Government Relations Committees, as well as the ASTM D14 and C24 Committees," noted Duren.

Source: ASC