Karen drives a lot of cool cars.
“I get to drive the most exciting cars.”
“I just love it. I love how it feels when you hop in the car and hear the engine. And how easily it drives and how smooth the car goes. It’s a great experience.”
Sustainability and a Circular Economy for Cars
As much fun as driving high-performance cars is, Karen’s passion lies in making cars more environmentally friendly. More sustainable.
“My interest in sustainability started when I was studying chemical engineering. I had to specialize and select one of the many options, and one of those was environmental studies. I was very excited to learn all the processes to clean pollutants from the water, from the air. And it started a passion.”
“I started to involve myself in all the sustainability activities in the companies that I worked for. It naturally developed.”
Today, as lead marketing manager for the Americas for Covestro, a global plastic maker, Karen works with car companies and component makers to develop a “circular economy” for cars.
“A circular economy is making sure we use all the resources efficiently. And at the end of the life, we give them a second life.”
Karen leverages her background in chemistry, engineering, automotive design and marketing to drive sustainable change in auto manufacturing.
“In my role, I talk to all the car manufacturers and their customers, and I analyze their sustainability goals and help translate those needs into products. And we help develop products and new applications that are designed from the beginning for sustainability, disassembly, recyclability.”
“We’re innovating so that cars are more recyclable. That’s a breakthrough in sustainability.”
The Making of More Sustainable Headlamp
One example: headlamps.
“Most headlamps nowadays have a large number of components, and they use many different materials. That makes them very difficult to recover at the end of life and very difficult to recycle. So, most of them, they just end up in the trash with no other use.”
“A few years ago, we launched a project with our customers focusing on their continuous needs of lowering cost while implementing new sustainable approaches. We took a traditional headlamp and reimagined it all. We implemented new materials, new processing techniques.”
A big part of that process involved reducing the number of materials used.
“We demonstrated that a headlamp can be made of a single material like polycarbonate, making it easy to recycle. The fact that it’s a mono material headlamp makes it easy to separate all the different components. This makes it easier for recyclability at the end of the life because you don’t have so many different materials.”
“And these technologies can be easily transferred to other car parts, like displays or grills.”
Benefits of Lighter Weight Car Components
This innovative process also unearthed some added sustainability benefits. Based in large part on reduced weight.
“By reducing the number of materials and components, we gained some additional benefits like reduced processing steps and reduced weight. This results in reduced cost and a reduced environmental footprint of the headlamp.”
Reduced cost. Reduced environmental footprint. Something every car maker… and car buyer… can get behind.
Evolution in Auto Sustainability
Karen sees this headlamp project as an example of the evolution of automotive sustainability.
“There are always new challenges in the automotive industry. And plastic has evolved together with cars. At the beginning, cars were made basically out of metals. Plastic made the cars safer and lighter, and that translates directly into fuel savings.”
“Now we’re helping reduce the environmental footprint of plastic by using our recycled materials. And we’re replacing part of the fossil based raw materials with renewable based materials, such as waste from other industries like used cooking oils, to make polycarbonate.”
This evolution in sustainability will go on and on, as plastic makers and car makers continuously innovate to make exciting cars.
“We’re also looking at new applications like replacing metals with thermal conductive polycarbonates that allow for better thermal management in electronics and EV batteries, which can reduce overall weight and cost compared to metals.”
“So, we’re helping reduce not only the carbon footprint of the plastic but also of the overall vehicle.”
We wish Karen continued success.