By John Richardson ONE OF THE GREATEST achievements of the last 30 years has been the fall in the number of people living in extreme poverty. In 1999, 1.9bn of the world’s population were living on less than $1.90, the Word Bank’s definition of extreme poverty. Despite setbacks caused by the pandemic, this had […]
Asian Chemical Connections
Environmental crises: no “silver bullet” solution but petchems must get this right
By John Richardson NO one-size-fits-all technological solution to the climate change and plastic waste crises is likely to work. What we will instead very probably see is a patchwork of solutions across regions and countries. This will be combined with what I believe must be common global regulatory approaches that everyone adheres to. I cannot […]
Plastic waste crisis threatens 575m tonnes of global non-recycled PE demand
By John Richardson THE DEMAND growth for oil and other liquid fuels could be more than 50% lower up until 2040 under one scenario presented by BP in its latest Energy Review. This outcome would be the result of substantial growth in polymers recycling over the next 20 years. Oil majors are spending billions of […]
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. […]
Four Billion Tonnes of Plastic Waste And Counting: The Threat To Petchems Growth
By John Richardson THE world will have produced a total of 6.9bn tonnes of the 11 synthetic polymers I’ve detailed in the above chart between 1978, when our data begins, and the end of 2017. Using the assumptions behind an important new study that was launched in July this year, let’s assume that 76% of […]
China, China And China: The Three Drivers Of Global Styrene
By John Richardson THE DATA on global polyethylene (PE) and polypropylene (PP) undermine the notion of booming emerging markets demand. In reality, it is only Chinese demand that has boomed and not the emerging markets as a whole. And when you look at all the commodity chemicals and polymers value chains, the headline data tells you […]