By John Richardson WE HAVE gone beyond the point of no return because of a major societal shift. Millennials, and a good number of a lot older people such as myself, have come to believe that “less is more”, that the environmental cost of throwaway consumption is intolerable. Take this comment from this Wall Street […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Environmental credits separate polymer Winners and Losers as the world divides
By John Richardson THE WORLD is becoming a much more complex and fragmented place as the consensus about the benefits of open markets and the largely unrestricted movement of labour is challenged. There also seems to be a split between those individuals and governments that agree with the science supporting human-made climate change versus those […]
Holding petchem CEOs to account: tackling societal needs the route to success
By John Richardson IF WE all had a dollar for every time we’d heard the phrase, “the growth of the Asian middle classes”, as just about the only justification by CEOs for petrochemicals and polymers investments, then the Principality of Monaco would by a very crowded place. There wouldn’t be enough room in the harbour […]
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. […]
Polymers industry risks sleepwalking into sustainability crisis
GLOBALLY some 75% of aluminium is recycled, 86% of steel and 40% of glass. Why shouldn’t the same levels of recycling eventually apply to some polymers? A good example here is HDPE which is already the second easiest polymer to recycle after PET resins. As sustainability pressures build on the polymers industry, it seems reasonable to assume […]
China’s time poor, cash rich will want less PP and not more
By John Richardson LAST month I gave you the downside of urbanisation in China and how this could result in 7m tonnes of lower polyethylene (PE) demand in 2030 than we assume in our base case. A very good contact of mine has however pointed out this fascinating article from the World Economic Forum on […]
Rise in sustainable mobility on new social trends: Impact on PP
By John Richardson ENVIRONMENTAL concerns over wasting the earth’s resources are one factor behind the rise of Uber and other ride-hailing services as a replacement for car ownership in cities. But in heavily congested cities, large several-tonne lumps of metal and plastic still spend a lot of time in traffic jams, even with clever routing […]
Plastics Rubbish Crisis: How To Pick The Winning Polymer Producers
By John Richardson IT IS FIVE years from now. You are rich because you live in the developed world. It is first thing in the morning. You take your rubbish (or trash as the Americans say) into you backyard and place it in a series of bins where you separate not only recycled from non-recycled […]
China Scrap Plastic Restrictions Create 111 Million Tonne Problem, Opportunity
By John Richardson FOR so many years, developed countries were able to limit the extent to which they had to incinerate, landfill and properly recycle plastic waste by shipping the waste to developing countries, mainly to China. A Science Advances study highlights the extent to which the developed world depended on China as an easy […]
Plastic Waste Crisis Will Reverse Petchems Globalisation
By John Richardson IT IS hardly surprising that a hot topic of discussion amongst chemical company CEOS gathered for the American Chemistry Council’s annual meeting in Colorado Springs, the US, was the threat of trade wars. As I have long argued, there is more than a 50% chance that we will end up in a […]