Polluting single-use plastic manufacturing rose by 6 million tonnes per yr from 2019 to 2021 despite more durable worldwide rules, with producers making “little progress” to sort out the issue and enhance recycling.
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Polluting single-use plastic manufacturing rose by 6 million tonnes per yr from 2019 to 2021 despite more durable worldwide rules, with producers making “little progress” to sort out the issue and enhance recycling, new analysis confirmed on Monday.
Single-use plastics have emerged as one of many world’s most urgent environmental threats, with huge quantities of waste buried in landfills or dumped untreated in rivers and oceans. The manufacturing course of can also be a serious supply of climate-warming greenhouse fuel.
But whereas development has slowed just lately, the manufacturing of single-use plastic from “virgin” fossil gas sources remains to be nowhere close to its peak, and the usage of recycled feedstocks stays “at best a marginal activity”, Australia’s Minderoo Foundation stated in its Plastic Waste Makers Index.
“Make no mistake, the plastic waste crisis is going to get significantly worse before we see an absolute year-on-year decline in virgin single-use plastic consumption,” it stated.
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Exxon Mobil was on the high of the checklist of world petrochemical corporations producing virgin polymers utilized in single-use plastics, adopted by China’s Sinopec.
Sinopec additionally leads the way in which in the case of constructing new manufacturing amenities over the 2019-2027 interval, the report stated, with greater than 5 million tonnes of annual capability deliberate. Exxon Mobil was second with round 4 million tonnes.
Exxon Mobil was not instantly obtainable for touch upon Monday. Sinopec additionally couldn’t be reached for remark.
China has pushed fast development in international plastic demand over the previous 15 years. Despite high-profile bans on some single-use merchandise beginning in 2019, it additionally accounted for half of the 15 million tonnes of recent capability that got here on-line over 2019-2021.
China stated final yr in a “five-year plan” to sort out plastic manufacturing that it could make deep cuts within the manufacturing and utilization of single-use plastics and ban some merchandise solely.
Chinese manufacturing development is predicted to gradual, however the nation nonetheless accounts for half of the highest 20 corporations planning to extend virgin polymer capability as much as 2027, Minderoo stated.
Around 137 million tonnes of single-use plastics have been produced from fossil fuels in 2021, and it’s anticipated to rise by one other 17 million tonnes by 2027, the researchers stated.
