1999 SPE Award Winners:
Environment Category
Seat Covers Using Recycled Polyethylene
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This innovation replaced an existing seat cover constructed from film, elastic and adhesive which had zero recycled content. The challenges addressed by this product were:
The seat cover shown below has a number of unique features, including:
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 The protective seat cover shown here is manufactured from recycled and
virgin polyethylene via a coextrusion process. This extrusion process results in a film
which has virgin material in the outer layers and recycled material as the inner layer.
The photo to the left is an enlarged microscopic view with the virgin layers at top
and bottom and recycled material in between. |
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| This film is then used for protective seat covers by the seating manufacturer, and enters into a closed loop recycling system (left). This design incorporates both post-consumer and post-industrial material and has resulted in the reclamation of more than a quarter million pounds of resin since the 1997 model year. |  |
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