Sustainable Plastics - April 2020 - 21

packaging
Plastic bottles
collected for
recycling

The
price of
sustainability
There are no simple answers, quick fixes or solutions to creating a circular
economy for plastics, writes Kevin Longworth. Beside all practical
implications, there is also the matter of funding to be solved.

ntil a few short years
ago the mention of
the word 'sustainability' would probably have conjured up images of a hippy commune living
from the land, growing their
own vegetables and generating electricity from a lone solar panel tied to their hut with
palm fronds.
Nowadays it has come to
represent an entire global
movement with the aim of protecting earth's resources and

creating a dialogue on climate
change. For plastics the question of sustainability has led to
serious questions being asked
about their future and their role
in modern society.
Following the global recession of 2008, almost 10 years
of demand growth was wiped
out from the commodity plastics industry, or and it has taken
Europe a decade to get back to
the domestic demand levels we
had in the boom year of 2007.
For some plastics, we are yet to

reach the consumption levels
we had in 2007; for example,
polyethylene consumption in
2007 in West Europe was 15.6
million metric tons, and at current projections it will only reach
that figure in 2021.

Reduce, reuse, recycle

In the previous decade the
discussion by industry was
about how to recover those
lost volumes and this was
a topic that remained firmly
within plastics industry cir-

cles. The evolution of demand
for the following decade is
now being driven by an entirely different set of circumstances with legislation, consumer
behaviour and industry commitments all working together
to reduce demand. Now the
industry mantra is 'reduce, reuse, recycle' and a far wider
group of stakeholders are having a say in which way the ship
should be steered. And make
no mistake: the plastics ship is
continued on page 22
April 2020

Sustainable Plastics - April 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Sustainable Plastics - April 2020