Sustainability

Making progress today: using more renewable and recycled materials in our tires

Mass balance is an accounting method that lets us track certified renewable and recycled materials through our supply chain even when they're mixed with conventional fossil-based and mined materials.

Bridgestone is always exploring ways to incorporate more renewable and recycled materials in our manufacturing to replace fossil-based and mined materials. Mass balance helps us do this in the short term so we can make progress today, not just someday.

Here’s how it works.

How Bridgestone uses mass balance

We source renewable, recycled, fossil-based, and mined materials to make our tires. Those materials are mixed in a complex supply chain and manufacturing process.

Because of this complexity, it is not possible to guarantee how much renewable or recycled content is in an individual tire. However, mass balance enables us to ensure that the certified renewable and recycled materials are tracked, accounted for, and attributed to final products.

Attribution

The physical composition of the tires is consistent, but we attribute renewable and recycled content to a subset of them. That's why we say that certain tires are linked to or support up to a percentage of renewable and recycled material, rather than saying they contain that percentage.

There are a few rules we follow for attribution:

·We do not claim more renewable or recycled content of an individual component than what can technically be in the tire.

·Across the product range, we do not claim more renewable or recycled content than what entered our manufacturing process.

·We ensure it is possible for the sourced material to be included in the attributed tire.

·We account for loss of material(s) during the manufacturing process.

Verification

We use the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) PLUS system — a globally recognized certification platform — to track and verify renewable and recycled materials. The ISCC Plus system audits our entire supply chain annually, from sourcing and refining, to manufacturing and attribution.

Looking ahead

In the race to reinvent the tire, mass balance isn't the finish line – it's the starting line. It helps us incorporate more renewable and recycled materials today, while the sustainable materials ecosystem matures. We believe that using this approach can drive market demand and encourage suppliers to produce more renewable and recycled materials, which would help the whole industry make progress faster.

In parallel, we're investing in new material technologies and working with suppliers to bring innovative solutions to market. Because we don't wait for change — we make it happen. That’s what really matters.

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