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:
- India’s Reliance Industries, one of world’s largest producers of single-use plastics, has pledged to double its recycling capacities and fight climate change. The company that contributes to a little over half of India’s plastic production plans to double its recycling capacity to 5 billion PET bottles a year and announced the launch of a PET plant at Dahej, Gujarat. The chairman of RIL said that its scientists have had a breakthrough in terms of generating compostable plastics. (Business Insider)
- Members of the Alliance to End Plastic Waste (AEPW) have been accused of being the biggest users of single-use plastic, while failing to meet their own recycling targets. Planet Tracker, a non-profit think tank, analysed the 65 current AEPW members to find that they have achieved just 0.04% of their recycling targets in the first three years of a five-year goal. AEPW members include PepsiCo, ExxonMobil, Shell, Veolia, Procter & Gamble, Total and Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings. (ESG Clarity)
- California’s legislature is trying to make thermoformed plastic containers – plastic containers shaped to a custom design – more green with a new bill under consideration. If the bill becomes law, it would require most types of thermoformed containers to include a percentage of recycled content that increases incrementally from 10% in 2025 to 20% by 2028 and 30% by 2030. (Plastics Today)
