Dow picks leaders for new recycling jobs

With plastics recycling becoming more of an important issue globally, DowDuPont Inc.'s Dow Chemical Packaging and Specialty Plastics unit has named two senior executives to newly created recycling roles.

Tim Boven will serve as recycling commercial director for North America and Latin America. Carsten Larsen will hold that same title for the Europe/Middle East/Africa and Asia Pacific regions. Both roles will address global plastics recycling and waste management challenges, officials with Midland, Mich.-based Dow said in an Oct. 8 news release.

Boven previously served as Dow's global integrated supply chain director for Hydrocarbons. He joined the firm in 1999. Larsen, an 18-year Dow veteran, had been Dow Industrial Solutions' commercial director for Europe, Middle East, Africa and India.

Dow officials said that in their new roles Boven and Larsen will be responsible for developing new business models and growth strategies that monetize plastics waste recycling streams across the Americas, EMEA and the Asia Pacific (APAC) region. They will work with their respective commercial leadership to help design the appropriate resource structure based in the regions to advance this effort.

In an Oct. 10 phone interview, Packaging & Specialty Plastics President Diego Donoso said that through its involvement with film recycling program Hefty Energy Bag and other programs, Dow “saw much bigger interest from brand owners and converters in finding different solutions to create a sustainability cycle.”

“The work we need to do as an industry and as a company is so large, and we were asking how to simplify the structure and commercially enable multiple stakeholders,” he added. “We decided we needed senior leaders to look at potential investment and co-investment in solutions and technology, whether it's mechanical, chemical or energy.”

Dow officials “aren't putting a limit” on what Boven and Larsen can do in the recycling market, according to Donoso.

“They're diving right into this new space and interacting with the whole value chain,” he said. “We're answering to a movement that's picking up fast. And it's not just in rigid plastics, but in flexible as well, where we need more help in recovery.”

Boven and Larsen already are evaluating current plastic waste streams around the world, working to identify innovations in recycling technology that will contribute to a global circular economy for plastic, officials said.

In North America and EMEA, Boven and Larsen will focus primarily on advancing the circular economy of plastic through new product offerings via technologies that will be used to transform plastic waste into valuable resources.

In Latin America and APAC, where recycling infrastructure is less advanced and plastic waste continues to increase, they will focus on new recycling, collection and infrastructure platforms for Dow and its local value chain partners that keep plastics out of the environment.

As part of their recycling strategy, officials said, Boven and Larsen also will build on Dow's existing collaborations, working with the company's value chain partners to address plastic waste challenges with Dow's technologies and initiatives that increase the recyclability of plastics. Their work will help Dow reach its 2025 Sustainability Goal of advancing a circular economy by delivering solutions to close the resource loops in key markets.

Dow ranks as one of the world's largest plastics and chemicals makers. The firm is a major producer of polyethylene as well as of elastomers and other specialty plastics.

Dow is a unit of DowDuPont Inc. The firm is expected to split into three separate public companies — Dow, DuPont and a third firm — by June 2019. DowDuPont posted sales of $79.5 billion in 2017.