Sustainability

Our approach to Sustainability

Our sustainability strategy signals our commitment to live up to our environmental, corporate, and social responsibilities. Silclear is committed to sustainability in everything we do from the boardroom to the production floor.

Supported by our parent company, Skellerup Holdings, and driven by committed leadership and front-line teams, we strive to consistently minimise waste, conserve and efficiently use energy, while also leading the shift towards a circular future for the whole silicone industry.

The Silicone Industry Challenge: Waste & Energy Use

Silicone’s durability is what gives it such a long, useful lifespan; but those same properties also make it difficult to recycle once its life cycle ends. As a result, much of the industry’s scrap still ends up in landfill or incineration. Closing the loop on silicone is essential, not only to preserve valuable resources but also to cut energy use and CO₂ emissions throughout the supply chain.

Choosing silicone is already a more sustainable option than many alternatives, as its use-phase benefits can outweigh production and end-of-life impacts by a significant margin. However, relying on these advantages alone is not enough. At Silclear, we believe the industry must go further, by reducing waste, improving recycling and managing the full lifecycle of silicone responsibly.

Global silicone production now stands at close to 2.9 million tonnes annually, reflecting steady growth across the industry. Recycling, however, remains at an early stage, with only an estimated 35,000–45,000 tonnes of silicone waste being recycled in 2024; a tiny fraction of overall production. This stark imbalance shows just how far the industry still has to go in developing effective recycling systems and reducing waste.

Silclear is addressing this directly. By investing in modern, energy-efficient equipment (such as our Maplan injection-moulding machine and modern low-energy ovens) we are actively reducing waste and cutting energy consumption across our operations.

Our re-Sil innovation takes things one step further and adds sustainability right into the production process.

re-Sil: Closing the Loop on Silicone

re-Sil is Silclear’s innovative approach to making silicone more sustainable. Traditional silicone production relies on virgin raw materials, which require significant energy and resources to manufacture and process. At the same time, offcuts and scrap from production often end up in landfill, contributing to waste and additional carbon emissions.

By reprocessing scrap into reusable, high-quality silicone material, re-Sil tackles both issues at once. Using recycled content means less virgin silicone needs to be produced, reducing the demand on suppliers and cutting the energy and emissions associated with raw material production. It also diverts waste from landfill, avoiding the environmental costs of disposal and transportation.

So the environmental benefits of re-Sil span the entire product lifecycle.

• Upstream, less virgin material is created.
• In our own operations, less scrap is wasted.
• Downstream, re-Sil creates the potential for a true circular system where end-of-life silicone products are returned, recycled and reused, keeping valuable resources in use for longer and significantly reducing the industry’s environmental footprint.

All of this means that re-Sil has the potential to close the loop within the silicone industry, changing a waste-heavy sector into one truly contributing to the future of our planet.