Plastics recycling is set to become a major new industry, based on the need to use renewable carbon. As the Nova Institute has shown, there is scope to expand production by 15x by 2050. And so if plastics companies don’t get to work now, new entrants will quickly emerge to replace them.
Chemicals and the Economy
Plastics producers need to move to recycled feedstocks as Western refineries start to close
Plastics producers are now being squeezed from both ends of the value chain. Upstream, the growing demand for Electric Vehicles is starting to lead to refinery closures, reducing feedstock availability. Downstream, brand owners are stepping up the pressure for increased use of recycled plastic, as the new Global Commitment report from the Ellen Macarthur Foundation […]
Biden’s Earth Day Summit puts plastics recycling on the fast track
Plastics has long been the ‘odd one out’ in terms of recycling. Steel, aluminium, glass, cardboard, rubber and paper routinely have up to a 70% rate of recycling. But plastics has been stuck at around 10% for a long time. President Biden’s Earth Day Summit is likely to change this picture, and quickly. The reason […]
COP 26 set to accelerate development of the 15-minute city
One of the good things to happen in the pandemic over the past year is that ‘cooking has become the new commute’ for many people. Working from home means they have often saved an hour or more a day in commuting time. And instead of sitting in a crowded bus or train, or being stuck […]
Circular economy set to replace today’s broken global supply chains
The Great Freeze in Texas has confirmed once again the problems with today’s global supply chains. As the New York Times has highlighted: “The pandemic has disrupted every stage of the (supply chain) journey”. The problems began last year with the disruption to the global shipping container system. Millions of containers were used to ship […]
China’s plastic ban and recycling launch marks end of ‘business as usual’ for plastics industry
Paradigm shifts start slowly at first, and it is easy to miss them. But then one day, they suddenly become obvious, and it becomes a scramble to catch up. That’s what happened on the waste plastic issue last week, when China decided to take action. As official news agency, Xinhua, reported: “The policy measures proposed […]
Portugal shows the way to climate neutrality by 2050
Portugal shows the way to climate neutrality by 2050
Day of reckoning approaches for US polyethylene expansions, and the European industry
Planning for future demand in petrochemicals and polymers used to be relatively easy during the BabyBoomer SuperCycle. The team would consult the latest IMF forecast for global and regional growth, and then debate the right ratio to use to calculate product demand. For polyethylene (PE), the ratio was generally just above GDP at around 1.1x, […]
There’s a great future for the European plastics industry in recycled plastic
Europe’s plastics industry is under major threat from the growing legislative and consumer backlash against plastic packaging. As with the global industry, its licence to operate is increasingly challenged by images of plastic rubbish polluting the world’s oceans, alongside photos of baby fish dying because their parents mistakenly fed them plastic instead of food. EU […]
$60bn opportunity opens up for plastics industry as need to eliminate single-use packaging grows
150 businesses representing over 20% of the global plastic packaging market have now agreed to start building a circular economy for plastics with the Ellen MacArthur Foundation. As a first step, Coca-Cola has revealed that it produced 3MT of plastic packaging in 2017 – equivalent to 200k bottles/minute, around 20% of the 500bn PET bottles used every […]