Bioplastics Demand to hit 6.2 m tons by 2017

Posted on December 13, 2013 by DrRossH in Plastic Waste News

Sustainable packaging demand fuels increase in bioplastic production.

The strongest growth likely will be in non-biodegradable bioplastics, such as PET and PE. Such material is attracting interest of CPGs such as Heinz and Coca-Cola, both of which pour their products into the recyclable, bio-based Plantbottle.

Lets put this in perspective.  The plastics industry produces about 300 million tons of plastic a year.  This will accumulate as plastic waste somewhere year after year to 600 million, 900 million, 1.2 billion tons only after 4 years.  6.2 m tons is a drop in the ocean.

Plus a very large plastics user, Coke is making a non-biodegradable bottle and saying we should be lauding their efforts to use a bioplastic source.   They are going to continue to pollute our lands at large rates.  They need to change their business model away from profits at any cost to the environment and step up to the plate to be a leader in Environmental management.  There are steps they can take that will make very large progress to stopping their products from polluting our lands and oceans for the next 500 years.  A deposit system on their plastic bottles will ensure a  very high percentage of their bottles get actively returned not just littered.  There are many examples of where this is in place in the world and working very efficiently.  In Tanzania, there is a deposit on their glass bottles and they have over 99% recycling.  In South Australia they have over 80% recycling where as a neighbouring state has approximately 25% recycling and a large littered plastic bottle problem.   So ask your selves why would Coke spend millions of dollars (in Australia alone) fighting such a scheme?

Their corporate greed is plain wrong for our future generations.