Welcome to the Plastics Weekly, NEO’s regular news monitoring of the plastics industry.
This week’s highlights:
- Nigeria has announced a ban on single-use plastics in government offices as a prelude to a nation-wide ban set to begin in January next year. The country is among the world’s top plastic polluters, generating over 2.5 million tonnes of plastic waste annually that mainly ends up in seas and landfill, according to a recent study by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). An outright ban on single-use plastics could become controversial in Nigeria, which is heavily dependent on the material. (Reuters)
- Japan is set to obligate major manufacturers to use recycled plastics as part of the country’s efforts to cut plastic pollution and promote decarbonization. The government aims to revise the law on the promotion of effective utilization of resources as early as next year, with the revision expected to request manufacturers to set specific targets and report their achievements on a regular basis. Japan currently “recycles” the majority of plastic waste though burning, a method call thermal recycling that nevertheless emits CO2. (Kyodo News)
- Plastics companies spent decades obstructing efforts to take on the plastics crisis and may have breached a number of U.S. laws, according to a new report. Research from the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) outlines the widespread burdens that plastic pollution places on US cities and states, and argues that plastic producers may be breaking public-nuisance, product-liability and consumer-protection laws. The report mentions top petrochemical and disposalbe plastic goods producers, such as ExxonMobil Chemical, Shell Polymers, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, saying these companies should be responsible for burdens placed on consumers. (The Guardian)