Plastics have spiraled exponentially throughout society and the environment to the point that we literally eat and breathe them on a regular basis. More corporations are responding to consumer outrage by using fewer virgin plastics to produce goods and packaging.
Using post-consumer plastics instead of raw petrochemicals is one important strategy within a suite of solutions to the global plastics crisis, but waste plastics are expensive, their makeup is hard to decode and the supply has not been reaching companies demanding them.
A 2021 report commissioned by Google projected a global investment of between $426 billion and $544 billion needed to close by 2040 “the plastics circularity gap,” defined as the difference between the volume of plastics produced and the sliver of plastics available from circular supply chains. Boosting the infrastructure to support these circular supply chains is key, the report found.
