Plastics. A success story.

© PlasticsEurope

View large image in a photo gallery

From 1950 to 2007, worldwide plastic production grew from approximately 1.5 million tons to 260 million tons. For more than 50 years the plastics industry, including plastic production, machine construction and processing, has been writing its success story while continuously growing. Western Europe is the global leader in plastic machine construction. The European plastics industry's approximately 50,000 factories employ a total of 1,600,000 people and do roughly 300 billion euros of business annually.

While the market share for high-performance plastics for niche products and special applications is still quite low at less than one percent, they do offer extraordinary application possibilities. The market share for technical plastics is also still relatively small at just under ten percent. Standard plastics are the base materials, which account for roughly 90 percent of the market shares and include polyolefins, PS, EPS, PVC and PET. The plastics industry has demonstrated above-average growth for years now, compared for example with steel or paper. While the average growth rate for steel from 1970 to 2007 was two percent and for paper three percent, plastics scored a whopping six percent. This tendency continues: In 2007 the worldwide consumption of plastic materials was 215 million tons, and experts project it to reach around 330 million tons by 2015. The largest growth potential is without a doubt in the rapidly developing Asian regions. In Europe, a rapid increase in consumption is expected in the new member states with their economic development. By far the largest application segment for plastic materials is the area of packaging, making up roughly 43 percent of the total consumption in Western Europe (4.5 million tons). Today, packaging without plastics is virtually unthinkable.

More important than ever: protecting resources

Plastics are constantly offering more resource-efficient solutions. This includes low energy demands during production, less material consumption and less waste with packaged goods thanks to increasingly lighter beverage bottles and cleaning agents, as well as thinner packaging films. Thus plastics contribute increasingly to waste prevention.
In 2007 total plastic waste in Europe was 24.6 million tons. Three-quarters of this amount was produced by the seven countries Germany, Italy, Great Britain, France, Spain, Poland and the Netherlands. The remaining quarter was contributed by the other 22 countries. On average across the EU, almost two-thirds of all plastic waste came from the packaging industry. The responsibility of waste management is to protect people and the environment from potential risks. It is more important than ever to use resources efficiently. In nine European countries already more than 80 percent of all plastic waste is utilised, either as material or energy. In regard to household-near plastic waste collection currently around 50 percent of the plastic waste is recycled, while the other half ends up in landfills. By and large, plastics are sustainable materials that demonstrate high energy efficiency and low emissions with process-optimised and cost-efficient manufacturing, and are effectively recyclable after initial use. Landfilling is considered the least preferable alternative, as this generates relatively high amounts of greenhouse gas emissions and also simply squanders resources. Minimizing the landfilling of waste with high calorific values, maintaining the balance of material and energetic utilisation through ecologically efficient waste management and processing and recycling waste with clearly defined environmental standards must certainly be integral aspects of sustainable waste management. With such as market-optimised strategy—less landfill and more utilisation—plastic waste can support an economically sound climate- and resource-protecting program in Europe.

Regrowing raw materials in the spotlight

In light of these considerations, as well as the rising prices for fossil raw materials and the global climate discussion, regrowing raw materials are rapidly gaining importance. Today the chemical industry is already an important outlet for regrowing raw materials. Roughly ten percent of all raw materials used in the chemical industry now use regrowing raw materials, such as starch, sugar, cellulose, fats and oils, among other things for organically based plastics traditionally designated as "organic plastic". This term, however, is rather ambiguous and must be distinguished in regard to raw material basis and functionality. Currently less than one percent of plastics consumption is based on regrowing raw materials, which consist primarily of starch materials, polylactic acid (PLA), cellulose materials and vegetable oils. In the future the production of plastics such as PE, PP and PVC on the basis of regrowing raw materials will play an increasingly important role.
In the end, however, these resources are also limited. The objective of all activities should be the most efficient provisioning and utilisation of biomass possible, on the condition of technical and economic feasibility. Plastic is flexible and is without a doubt already contributing significantly to resource efficiency and environmental safety. According to Plastics Europe, their efforts have led to a reduction of the otherwise occurring CO2 emissions by approximately 56 percent and an energy savings of roughly 26 percent.

back