I cannot believe that we are officially halfway through our trip! Today we got the opportunity to visit Nouryon. Nouryon is a global company that focuses on creating and testing chemicals in order to make materials like PVC, rubber, etc. This was a very great site visit, seeing as we got to learn a lot about the company and its sustainability practices and goals. Some fun facts are how they make 3000+ different products, which contain from 5,000 to 10,000 different chemicals, and they have locations in over 80 countries. Their base for all their products is organic peroxide, which they make on-site and have over 50 different types. Through this site visit, we were able to learn a lot and were able to visit 3 different labs: the safety handling lab, the ecotoxicology lab, and the biodegradation lab. Seeing these labs helped us better understand what they do as well as connect it to sustainability.
In the biodegradation lab, they focus on making sure the chemicals and products they are using are safe and decomposable in our guts, in food, and in the environment. They showed us some experiments that they are doing right now and taught us that they can take anywhere from 28 to 60 days to determine if this is safe for the environment. Moreover, if they find out this chemical is not biodegradable, they start over in order to make sure that it is biodegradable in order to use it while maintaining sustainability and environmental consciousness. In the safety lab, they focus on making sure that the product they made is safe. They perform extremely dangerous experiments to make sure of this, including having a 55 m³ chamber in order to control the heat transfer, pressure, temperature, etc., while still staying safe from these harmful chemicals and products. Finally, in the ecotoxicology lab, they focus on making sure that the chemicals and products aren’t harmful to humans, the environment, and our ecosystem.
Overall, this site visit was very enlightening, and we learned a lot about the behind-the-scenes of products we use every day, like our shoes, golf balls, boats, trains, etc. I also found it incredible the number of measures they take in every single experiment to ensure that their products are safe for the environment. Sadly, we weren’t able to take any pictures at the site visit, but we have officially made it to Rotterdam. Just a few hours into this city, and I can see some major changes from what we saw in Amsterdam. I am excited to see what this new city will bring!