BASF creates chemistry at sustainable brands conference

BASF Corporation will demonstrate how connections can create chemistry to drive sustainable solutions in industries such as packaging, home and personal care, and health and nutrition during two seminars at the Sustainable Brands Conference in San Diego, California, June 3 to 6, 2013.

Christopher Bradlee, Biopolymers Market Development Manager for BASF in North America, will discuss sustainable packaging and the BASF technology that is helping the Seattle Mariners achieve their environmental objectives in a breakout session titled “Sustainable Packaging,” on Wednesday, June 5, from 2-3 p.m. at the Paradise Point Resort and Spa in San Diego.

BASF has teamed up with the Seattle Mariners for their third consecutive season of Sustainable Saturdays at Safeco Field. Thanks in part to ecovio®, a partially bio-based resin which is used to make certified compostable bags for food waste collection, and BASF-sponsored zero waste stations throughout the Safeco Field concourse, the Mariners and their fans divert more than 86 percent of game-day waste away from local landfills through recycling of plastic bottles and composting of food waste and food service items.

On Wednesday, June 5, BASF will present a breakout session on business tools that aid sustainability efforts, using the salmon industry as an example. The session, titled “Translating strategy into action: Market-based sustainability approaches to drive the journey towards more sustainable products,” features three speakers and will take place from 3:30-4:30 p.m. at the Paradise Point Resort & Spa.

Cristian Barcan, Regional Head of SET – Applied Sustainability, for BASF Nutrition & Health, will start the session by discussing mini hot-spot analysis and life cycle exercises such as BASF’s SET Initiative, which makes sustainability measurable and identifies opportunities for enhancing product sustainability across an entire value chain. The objective of SET is to create an additional value dimension for consumers and brands based on applied sustainability.

Sarah E. Lewis, Ph.D., Working Group Director, The Sustainability Consortium, will discuss key performance metrics used to measure and track product category sustainability for farmed salmon, questions to measure and track product category sustainability. These include energy use and emissions from feed production, fisherie from feed production, emissions from fish farming, and product distribution.

Finally, Vidar Gundersen, Sustainability Manager for BioMar, which is located in Denmark, will present his company’s perspectives on measuring and improving sustainability aspects of fish feed. This is important because the feed for farmed fish accounts for 80 percent of the environmental impact of bringing the salmon to market.

For those attending the seminars, BASF will give away 100 ‘kitchen catchers’ ( countertop compost bins) and 600 ECOSAFE® Compostable Plastic Trash/Garbage Bags made of ecovio at the Sustainable Brands gift lounge.

For more information, please visit www.bioplastics.basf.com/ecovio.