Michelin, the leading mobility company, founded in 1889, is dedicated to enhancing its clients’ mobility, sustainably; designing and distributing the most suitable tires, services and solutions for its clients’ needs; providing digital services, maps and guides to help enrich trips and travels and make them unique experiences; and developing high technology materials that serve a variety of industries. Headquartered in Clermont-Ferrand, France, Michelin is present in 170 countries, has 123,600 employees and operates 71 tire production facilities which together produced around 170 million tires in 2020.
Our “All Sustainable” Approach
“Tomorrow, everything we do will be sustainable”, Florent Menegaux, CEO of Michelin Group.
Offering everyone a better way forward is our corporate mission. Our “All Sustainable” approach is constantly driving us to find solutions that foster an optimal balance between personal fulfillment, economic development, and protection of the planet and its inhabitants.
Inspired by the VISION concept tire introduced in 2017, an airless, connected, rechargeable, and entirely sustainable solution, the Michelin Group is preparing a sustainable solution for each tire component with a diversity of approach. It is committed to making its tire 100% sustainable by 2050, and by integrating 40% of biosourced or recycled materials in all its tire products by 2030.
Michelin Circular Economy: the 4R approach
The circular economy aims to create greater value in all areas and at all stages (design, manufacture, multiple reuses, …) for as many people as possible, by minimizing the use of materials and thereby preserving natural resources.
From the design phase through to the end of their life, our products and services encourage long-term use, protect the environment and allow our customers to drive for longer while still delivering a high level of performance.
Our commitment is backed by the « 4R » policy, focusing on:
- Reduce: We endeavor to reduce the environmental impact of our products throughout their lifecycle. This means that we design tires that require fewer raw materials, consume less energy and offer longer-lasting performance: driving for longer with lower CO2 .
- Reuse: Our tires are designed to optimize materials and the use of resources. For the largest tires such as Truck, Civil Engineering, Farming and Aircraft tires, reusing means repairing, regrooving and retreading tires to extend their natural life and initial performance.
- Recycle: All tires have an end of life. We support used tire recovery systems in many countries to recycle them. Recycling allows us to use materials in new products or forms of energy. Michelin invests in the long-term search for news solutions to provide cleaner mobility in particular through recycling.
- Renew: Because raw materials are finite and therefore precious, we adopt a sustainability-by-design approach for our tires.
An objective met with powerful R&D capabilities…
Michelin’s maturity in materials technology stems from the strength of its R&D capabilities, which are supported by 6,000 people working in seven research and development centers around the world and mastering 350 areas of expertise. The commitment of these engineers, researchers, chemists and developers has led to the filling of 10,000 patents covering tire design and manufacturing. They work hard every day to find the recipes that will improve tire safety, durability, ride and other performance features, while helping to make them 100% sustainable by 2050.
…and bold partnerships with innovative companies
Michelin is also aware that the speed and nature of innovation requires new forms of cooperation, which is why it has forged partnerships with innovative companies and start-ups whose advances offer unlimited prospects. The developed technologies go well beyond the world of tires and could be used in other industries, enabling them to benefit as well from recovered raw materials that are infinitely reusable. These technologies will also make it possible to recycle polystyrene and recover carbon black or pyrolysis oil from used tires.
BlackCycle project is therefore aligned with our “All-Sustainable” approach. By creating a circular economy of the end-of-life tyres into high technical second raw materials, BlackCycle contributes to achieve our commitment to making our tires more sustainable.