Welcome to the Plastics Weekly, NEO’s regular news monitoring of the plastics industry.
Every week, we publish a roundup of the top developments in plastics and sustainability – from regulatory changes to company news.
This week’s highlights:
- Consumer goods giants including Danone, Unilever, Mars and PepsiCo have said that they will collectively be looking to purchase 800,000 tonnes of chemically recycled plastics by 2030, sending a demand signal to the waste management value chain. The figure is being presented to investors, suppliers and regulators by the Consumer Goods Forum’s (CGF) Coalition of Action on Plastic Waste. Signing the letter are Amcor, Barilla, Colgate-Palmolive, Danone, Ferrero, Haleon, Henkel, Mars, McCain, Mondelez International, PepsiCo and Unilever. The figure is based on the demand forecast of these firms plus dozens of others. (Edie)
- Plastic pollution litigation could cost the plastics industry and its insurers $20 billion in the US over the next eight years, according to a report backed by the United Nations and an Australian billionaire. Companies including petrochemical and consumer goods firms may be liable for the cost of cleaning up plastic pollution, while emerging legal pathways to claim for the harm to society threaten to add to their corporate liabilities. Beyond 2030, legal claims “could be an order of magnitude larger.” (Bloomberg)
- A newly developed catalytic system can unravel plastic waste into small and useful chemical fragments. This depolymerisation technology can turn used plastics into propylene to make new plastics. Researchers in the US have now pioneered a method to depolymerise polyethylene chains into propylene, an important feedstock for the chemical industry. Unusually, two separate teams of scientists simultaneously developed the multi-component catalytic system required for this process. (Chemistry World)