Hello!
This is the first in NEO’s new series of plastics news monitoring.
Every Monday, we’ll publish a roundup of the top weekly developments in the sphere of plastics and sustainability – from regulatory changes to company innovations.
This week’s highlights:
- Latin America’s largest petrochemicals company Braskem – a pioneer in deriving sustainable polymers from sugarcane – is leading the way in the expanding field of bioplastics. The company is now providing blue-chip companies like Walmart and Danone with its “green” polyethylene, as it works to sell 1 million tonnes of recycled content products annually by 2030. (Financial Times)
- ·Subaru of America, a subsidiary of the Japanese automaker, has emerged as a surprise champion of U.S. national parks. After creating the country’s first zero-landfill auto plant in 2004, the company launched the program Don’t Feed the Landfills, which in five years has eliminated 16 million pounds of refuse across pilot locations through a combination of recycling, composting, and educational initiatives. (Bloomberg)
- Tesco, the largest supermarket chain in the UK, has removed 20 million items of single-use plastic from its Christmas offering this year – as well as removing glitter from cards and wrapping paper to make them recyclable. Tesco’s move comes in advance of a regulatory crackdown in 2022 that will tax retailers for using plastic packaging that contains less than 30% of recycled content. (The Guardian)