2019 is the year that giant food, drinks and beauty companies used more fossil fuels than ever before, creating mountains of man-made plastic for communities and future generations to have to deal with, but is it now too late to keep global warming temperatures and affects in check?
To make matters worse, plastic production is expected to grow 40% by 2030, but why has it gotten to the stage where the impacts of plastic pollution have only really been revealed to the general public over the last few years? The truth is, just 20 years ago plastic had very little impact on our climate. Don’t believe us? Click here to view some stats and figures relating to plastic production.
What makes that even harder to believe is when jumping 20 years forward to today, the production of plastic is expected to use nearly 14% of the world’s oil and gas. By 2050 plastic production is set to drive half of oil demand growth. The facts and figures continue to be more and more alarming.
2019 wasn’t all bad news as far as we’re concerned. 2019 was the year that the inhabitants of planet earth fought back with both political and corporate action taking place against plastic. Going plastic-free became the trendy thing to do and the huge food, drinks and beauty companies were put under pressure for their contributions to the growing problems. 2019 was also the year that government took accountability and pledged new laws, solutions and initiatives.
The public also took huge steps in order to fight against plastic pollution by cleaning up beaches and reducing the use of plastic in their homes by any means necessary. Major UK supermarkets worked hard to ditch the number of virgin plastics that they used, particularly in the packaging of their products with a promise of using recycled plastic wherever possible.
The war between petrochemical companies and those who are trying to prevent plastic pollution is fully under way as we head into 2020, however, it is still being largely won by petrochemical companies with growth and expansion set to continue at a greater rate than ever before over the next few decades. For this reason alone, 2020 is widely seen to be critically important with an oceans conference being held by the UN in June which will assess worldwide progress on plastic pollution.
Plastic is just as much as a problem in our industry too. You NEED to take your responsibilities seriously. To find out more about our toner cartridge recycling service, please contact us.
