Plastic business booming

It’s the worst enemy of environmental campaigners, but people around the world use mountains of plastic every day and business is booming for manufacturers.

Much to the chagrin of activists, an increasingly restrictive regulatory environment appears to have put little dent in the industry’s power so far.

That is changing, however, and plastic giants are starting to adapt.

From 2006 to 2016, global plastic output rose from 245 million to 348 million tonnes, according to the PlasticsEurope trade association. Production rose by 3.9 percent in 2017. In 2016 the growth rate stood at 4.0 percent and in 2015 at 3.5 percent.

Demand for thermoplastics alone — which includes the most common kinds of plastic, such as PET used in water bottles, polypropylene, polyethylene and PVC — has soared by 4.7 percent yearly from 1990 to 2017.

“Is this going to continue in the coming years? We can assume it will,” said Herve Millet, technical and regulatory affairs manager at PlasticsEurope.

“The reasons why plastic (production is) growing worldwide are not just going to go away all at once,” he added.

The growth of the plastics industry goes hand-in-hand with economic development, Millet said.

The more an economy grows, the more plastic is used in construction, infrastructural development, electrical and electronic industries and transport.

Single-use plastic packaging — the nemesis of environmental activists — is also in strong demand in developing countries.

Even in Europe, where anti-plastics campaigning has been especially vigorous, packaging accounts for 40 percent of consumption.

But the world’s leading producer of plastic is China. Today it holds a whopping 29 percent of the market share, up from 15 percent just a decade ago.

European, US and Japanese plastic manufacturers have meanwhile seen their market share shrink.