Materials News

Plastics not the enemy say Asian countries
The Asian plastics industries will rally governments to change littering habits in the respective countries and work towards educating the public that plastics have a lower carbon footprint compared to other materials, said Callum Chen, Secretary-General of the Asia Plastics Forum (APF), which represents 12 Asian countries, at a recent conference in China.

The 20th APF conference was themed "The Asian Plastics Industry: Facing Challenges Together Through Sustainability and Accountability", and attracted over 300 delegates from Asian countries. Recognising the importance of the environment, the APF had established a Sustainable Development Committee in 2007 and had signed a Declaration in 2008 with the primary objective of preserving the environment and implementing "Responsible Care" activities to protect the health and safety of the public and care for the environment.

The keynote presentation entitled "Innovative Solutions and Science-Based Responses to a Variety of Societal Problems of Plastics and Challenges Across the World" was delivered by Dr Wolfgang Siebourg from PlasticsEurope. He said that building win-win relationships with all stakeholders were important and provided examples of practical tasks that the national plastics organisations could embark on to promote responsible use of plastics, in particular, plastic bags.

Dr Siebourg also highlighted solutions to manage environmental challenges involving innovative sustainable development action plans such as Eco footprint, which is a measurement of a human's demand on nature. Eco footprint encourages users towards "informed" decisions rather than suggesting simple choices between "good or bad" materials.

APF is also collaborating with PlasticsEurope in the future as it has the experience of bringing 27 countries together to address issues of health, safety and waste that are related with plastics and the environment.