Plastics make our daily life easier, safer and more enjoyable: Let's take the food packaging easy to carry and handle, the bike helmet protecting a kid, or modern entertainment electronics like LCD or LED flat screens guaranteeing finest amusement. But when it comes to sustainability, plastics sometimes has a reputation disproportionate to its real qualities. The truth is: Plastics help us to do more with less in many ways, thereby conserving natural resources and protecting the environment for tomorrow.

Protect and Preserve

Thanks to their unique features, plastics packaging extends shelf life, preserves food taste and protects food from contamination for example by bacteria. Plastics packaging for fresh meat, for instance, extend shelf life by three to six days. Considering that producing one kilo of beef leads to greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to three hours of car driving, this is a substantial reduction of the environmental footprint. In many developing countries, a lot of resources like water, land, and energy are wasted on food that never reaches the consumer, this often due to the lack of efficient packaging. And further savings for the environment are provable: While over 50% of all European goods are packed in plastics these plastics account only for 17% of all packaging weight. Furthermore, the plastics packaging weight has been reduced by 28% over the past 10 years!

Plastics also play a major role in sustainable construction. Just think of window frames, insulating foams or water pipes. Across their whole life cycle, plastic insulation materials save 150 times the energy used for their manufacture. Moreover, the durability of plastics and their anti-corrosion properties provide them with an impressive life span which can reach over 50 years for plastic pipes. And these pipes are produced with less energy than alternative materials, also saving transport costs and emissions due to their lightweight design.

Plastics in Transportation

While motorization in developing countries is rising and a growing number of people have access to modern transport systems, the development of lighter vehicles consuming less fuel must keep path. Today, in a modern car there are some 15% of plastics, replacing more and more components made from other, often heavier materials. The positive environmental impact is impressive: Over the average lifespan of a car, every 100 kg of plastics reduce fuel consumption of the vehicle by around 750 litres. In aircraft, the increased use of plastics enables weight savings and reduces fuel consumption. The Airbus A380, the world's largest commercial aircraft, is built from 22% of carbon reinforced plastics, while Boeing's Dreamliner is constructed mostly from plastic composites, generating fuel savings of around 20%.

Trend: Upcycling

And innovation doesn't stop here: Newest "upcycling" processes are already in use producing recycled plastics in almost the same quality and composition as new polymers. Bio-polymers made from sugar cane and used as packaging material are reducing the ecological footprint. Wind turbine blades now span up to 150 meters thanks to new carbon fiber composites withstanding greater forces and stresses. A pilot plant in Germany is producing plastics from carbon dioxide (CO₂) as an alternative to the production of polymer materials from fossil fuels. All these projects are expected to boost sustainability by decreasing the impact of CO₂ on global warming. So in a world that is growing in population, with ever-increasing demands for water, food, shelter, sanitation, energy, health services and economic security, plastics is key to help deal with these issues.