Plastics & Rubber World - September/October 2019 - 4

COMMENT

EDITORIAL
Editor: Julian Buckley
+44 (0)7376 804111 jbuckley@crain.com
t @Julian_Buckley

FROM THE
EDITOR

Art Director: John Woodhatch
+44 (0)7778 964300 jwoodhatch@crain.com
Editorial Director: Don Loepp
+1 313 4466767 dloepp@crain.com
ADVERTISING
Sales Director: Matthew Barber
+44 (0)7739 302081 mabarber@crain.com
Sales Manager: Darren Tindal
+44 (0)1273 251277 Dtindal@crain.com
Marketing Manager: Lucy Cottrell
+44 (0)7740 407035 lcottrell@crain.com
Media Services Manager: Patrick Alfes
+1 313 446 0387 palfes@crain.com
Vice President/Group Publisher:
Brennan Laﬀerty
+1 313 446 6768 blaﬀerty@crain.com
Chairman: Keith E Crain
Vice Chairman: Mary Kay Crain
President: K C Crain
Senior Executive Vice President: Chris Crain
INTERNATIONAL ADVERTISING
Benelux, France: Arthur Schavemaker
Kenter & Co. B.V., Spoorstraat 21,
NL-7470 AC Goor, The Netherlands
Tel: +31 (0)547-275005 Fax: +31 (0)547271831 Email: Arthur@kenter.nl
Germany, Switzerland, Austria and
Eastern Europe: Randolf Krings
Emcmedia UG, Kaiser-Friedrich-Ring 46,
D-65185, Wiesbaden, Germany
Tel: +49 (0)611 5324 416
Mobile: +49 (0)176 384 23044
Fax: +49 (0)611 5324 519
Email: epn@emcmedia.de
Italy: Fabio Potestà
Mediapoint & Communications SRL,
Corte Lambruschini, Corso Buenos Aires,
8, V piano - interno 7, 16129 Genova - Italy
Tel: +39 010 570 49481
Fax: +39 010 553 0088
Email: info@mediapointsrl.it
United States: Patrick Cannon
Sales Director, Plastics News, 1155 Gratiot
Avenue, Detroit, Michigan, 48207, USA.
Tel: +1 313 446 1625
Email: pcannon@crain.com
PRW is published bi-monthly in
print and digital versions by Crain
Communications Ltd.
Registered Oﬃce: 100 New Bridge Street,
London EC4V 6JA United Kingdom
Registered No. 1576350 England.
V.A.T. No. GB 577 6905 84
Printed by Warners Midlands, Bourne,
Lincolnshire.
ISSN 2632-1181
Advertising terms and conditions are
available at www.prw.com
© 2019 Crain Communications Ltd.
All rights reserved. Contents may not be
reprinted without the permission of the
publishers.
SUBSCRIPTIONS
£20/€25.50 single copy; £98/€125.
Subscription includes surface mail
postage; air mail rates available on
request. Four weeks notice required for
change of address.
Note: Subscription payments may be
made using major credit cards.
Subscriptions correspondence to:
Circulation Department, PRW,
1155 Gratiot Ave. Detroit, MI 48207, US.
Tel: +1 313 446 0450
A member of

Accentuate the positive

aybe it's not as popular as in years gone by, but gardening remains a quintessentially British pastime. Even if you paid someone to come over and mow the lawn,
there's little better than relaxing in a sunny, well-manicured garden, a glass of your
favourite beverage close to hand.
Personally, I'm terrible at gardening - and plant care in general. People have gifted me
with plants and regretted it just weeks later, as they stood shrivelled, unloved. This does
not bode well for the small patch of grass outside our new house, but I'm going to give it a
good shot this time. Really.
But although I may have been otherwise occupied when green thumbs were handed out,
I think I'm reasonably good at spotting a decent idea. Tomatoes, it is reported, are the vegetable (or fruit, if you prefer) used most in the food processing industry. To support this,
commercial tomato farming generally involves a PE mulch ﬁlm to help control weeds, water
usage and soil temperature.
After the tomatoes are harvested, that plastic ﬁlm must be
removed from the soil. But that's diﬃcult and some product is unavoidably left behind. This breaks down into microplastics and collects in the earth - not an ideal situation.
In late August, global chemical giant BASF announced the
launch of a new mulch ﬁlm product, Ecovio M 2351. Made
from polybutylene adipate terephthalate (PBAT) and other
biodegradable polymers, the new material can be ploughed
into the soil after the harvest. Naturally-occurring micro-organisms recognise the plastic particles as food and metabolise what remains.

Not only does the ﬁlm deliver the same beneﬁts as standard PE product, but increased microbial activity directly attributed to the PBAT product generates energy used to form new
biomass. This promotes better root development, plant growth and improved soil quality.
That bears repeating - this is a plastic which promotes improved soil quality.
While plastic bashing continues unabated, it's developments such as these that need exposure to help counter the one-sided argument. Promotion of the beneﬁts plastics can
provide is key to the 'communication' message that Martin Althorpe, new president of
the British Plastics Federation, is looking to implement while in oﬃce. You can read more
about Martin's plans on page 32 of this issue.
But for now, when you're relaxing in your garden in the last of this summer season's sunshine, pay a mind to those tinned tomatoes you might include in your bolognaise sauce.
They could've been grown with the help of a great new sustainable plastic product. And
that's worth talking about.
Really.
As always, thanks for reading.
Julian Buckley
Editor, PRW magazine and website, jbuckley@crain.com

This is a plastic
which promotes
improved soil
quality

WWW.PRW.COM | SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2019

http://www.prw.com http://WWW.PRW.COM

Plastics & Rubber World - September/October 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Plastics & Rubber World - September/October 2019