📈Market Analysis

Plastic waste is highly visible. While 1 million bottles are produced every minute in the world along with a total of 78 Million tons of plastic per year, 32% end in nature and 40% in the landfill. One estimate is that 8 million tons end up in oceans every year affecting biotopes. It kills animals that ingest plastic parts and diffuse as microparticles that will integrate the food chain. By 2050, there will be more plastic in weight in the oceans than fish.

80% of that pollution comes from the land with five countries in Asia contributing to over half of the land-based leakage.

Rising volumes of litter and highly visible ocean plastic, are putting pressure on governments, businesses, and consumers to address the environmental impact of beverage container waste.

The European Commission has put in place new regulations with more challenging targets for recycling, collecting, and waste reduction as well as a ban on landfilling of separately collected waste. The European directive put in force by 2021 imposes a ban on certain single-use plastic items and increases the obligation to use minimum recycled PET to 30% in PET bottles (PET is the dominant material for beverage bottles) to the point that recycled PET may become more scarce than virgin PET.

Other countries in the world are contemplating the implementation of similar regulations. We can anticipate that the world will soon become a large market for circular economy initiatives and notable loops for plastic waste, bottles, and flexibles.

While governments are working on setting a regulatory frame for the plastic economy, producers are working on redesigning packaging to use less material, integrate non-fossil fuel-based plastic, and increase the efficiency of the production chain. They are also taking the initiative to mobilize consumers, get involved in educational programs, and engage themselves to reduce their environmental impact.

Municipalities, environmental organization,s and consumers are multiplying initiatives to tackle the plastic problem on the planet and on our own health as well.

There is no doubt that plastic is a very useful material that helps humanity to progress further and, in many applications, it can’t be replaced by a better material or by a material with less impact (that has to be measured from cradle to cradle). The issue is then not about the material but how we use and dispose of it. If one can think about Reusing, Recycling, Rethinking, and simply reducing the use of plastic, because of its physical properties, one could imagine using it in a loop endlessly. The circular economy is a recent concept, with a new industrial recycling infrastructure to set up and new behaviors of all the stakeholders of the global and local loops. Today collection is the main pillar allowing us to close the loop of circular economy and step away from the linear economy model we inherited from the industrial revolution: take resources from the planet, make, use and waste.