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Backlash to Plastic has Oil Companies Worried

posted by martyb on Thursday June 06 2019, @12:39AM   Printer-friendly
from the "The-Graduate" dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

Bloomberg:

As the world strives to wean itself off fossil fuels, oil companies have been turning to plastic as the key to their future. Now even that's looking overly optimistic.

The global crackdown on plastic trash threatens to take a big chunk out of demand growth just as oil companies like Saudi Aramco sink billions into plastic and chemicals assets. Royal Dutch Shell Plc, BP Plc, Total SA and Exxon Mobil Corp. are all ramping up investments in the sector.

Renewed emphasis on recycling and the spread of local bans on some kinds of plastic products could cut petrochemical demand growth to one-third of its historical pace, to about 1.5% a year, said Paul Bjacek, a principal director at consulting firm Accenture Plc.

Maybe they can convince consumers to accept clamshell packaging for everything.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday June 07 2019, @02:27PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday June 07 2019, @02:27PM (#852693) Journal
    Bolivia isn't in the developed world. Seagulls and eagles aren't transferring millions of tons of plastic trash. Heavy metals aren't plastics nor can much of heavy metals involved in pollution be recycled (for example, a good portion of mercury pollution is mercury in the environment in low concentrations reemitting itself into the environment).

    And what evidence really needs to be presented to support the claim that the developed world ships a massive amounts of waste plastic elsewhere via boat? Well, there's the recent story [soylentnews.org] about US recycling so deeply impacted by China ending the receiving of US plastic waste (all shipped by boat BTW) that a bunch of urban recycling programs outright ended. That indicates both problems I claimed, that lots of plastics for recycling were being shipped by boat, which is a significant source of ocean-based plastic and then gets dumped in China or elsewhere in the developing world, which is another significant source of ocean-based plastic.