By John Richardson MORE THAN 100 countries, including the US, are thought to favour a treaty being proposed at the next UN Environment Assembly in February and March that would set targets for reducing plastic waste in the environment, according to the BBC. I see this as great news, a step forward, as I was […]
Asian Chemical Connections
More data show how far we still have to go to solve the climate and plastic waste crises
By John Richardson SEE THE END section of this blog post for a dystopian version of our environmental future. In a follow-up post – which I will publish on Thursday, 1 July – I will offer some suggestions about how we can avoid an outcome that nobody of course wants. Both posts are meant to […]
Plastic rubbish: the pandemic is increasing rather than reducing the pressure for change
This is the first of a series of blog posts where I will examine the environmental paradigm shift and what it means for the petrochemicals industry. This first post deals with the bottom end of the value chain, the plastic packaging business, and the pressure being exerted upward on petrochemicals producers to change how they […]
Asian copolymer polyproplyene used as a sink for growing oversupply of ethylene
By John Richardson A SURE sign that the Asian ethylene-to-polyethylene (PE) markets are distressed comes from the above chart on the left which shows declines in block copolymer polypropylene (PP) premiums over homo-polymer raffia-grade PP since June of this year. In October in Southeast Asia (SEA), the price for the normally higher value block copolymer […]
The US places heavy bets on LLDPE at a time of demand erosion
By John Richardson IT IS a remarkably single product-focused strategy given the exposure of linear-low density polyethylene (LLDPE) to demand erosion from the global plastics rubbish crisis. Looking across the three grades of PE, the US will end up with a 33% global share of net exports (exports minus imports) amongst the world’s net export […]
Complacency, LLDPE and plastic waste: A collapse in demand
By John Richardson THE TECHNICAL people, those with PHDs in polymer science who have also spent years in application development work, will tell you it is simply impossible to find other materials that perform as well as LLDPE. Multi-layer LLDPE films are vital in applications such as wrapping food, they argue, thanks to excellent barrier properties. […]
Sustainability to stop petchems from dominating oil growth…..
….and oil consumption into petchems might even decline because of the plastics rubbish crisis By John Richardson DONALD RUMSFELD famously categorised the future into “known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns”. A new study by the International Energy Agency (IEA) suggests that in the world as it is today – the “known knowns” – petrochemicals […]
China Polyethylene: Inland Growth And Internet Sales Versus Threat From Sustainability
By John Richardson THE ABOVE CHART uses the same approach I used in late February for my post on per capita polypropylene consumption in China. In this case, my focus is on polyethylene (PE): The latest available IMF data for per capita income levels by province and other administrative region in China is for 2016 […]
Plastic Waste: The Billion Dollar Threat To The Global Polymers Business
By John Richardson THE global scale of the plastics waste challenge is illustrated by the above chart from my blog post last October. Using our ICIS Supply & Demand Database, examining the production of of 11 major polymers, some 4bn tonnes of plastic has ended up in the natural environment since 1978. Estimates like this […]