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Last week, to great fanfare, Adidas launched a shoe that was made almost entirely from plastic collected and recycled from the ocean. The launch included an announcement from Adidas Group Executive Board Member of Global Brands, Eric Liedtke, who informed an expectant media how “The upper shoe is made entirely of yarns and filaments reclaimed from illegal deep-sea gillnets and other ocean waste, while the base is made from sustainable cushioning material.”

Unfortunately, Adidas has no plans at present to sell the shoe, and it remains a ‘concept shoe’, constructed after a 110 day voyage by the environmental sailors on the vessel Sea Shepherd.

This news came as a surprise for two main reasons. Firstly, that such a thing as a ‘concept shoe’ exists, and secondly that a trainer/sneaker created never to go on sale should become such a newsworthy event.

Any company’s attempt to solve a problem such as ocean waste or increased recycling of plastics is to be applauded, but if the plastic being reused is from a single collection and the sneaker is never to be sold, then isn’t the story more publicity stunt than planet saving action?

Perhaps the media should focus more on a company such as Ecover, a business founded in 1979 based on a product that was a phosphate free washing powder. Today, it produces a whole range of household cleaning products with a view to having less impact on the environment. For example it’s toilet cleaner contains only the following ingredients; water, citric acid, lauryl polyglucose, sodium citrate, xanthan gum, parfum, sodium benzoate, linalook  and limonene.

Better still, on the plastics front it is selling a washing up liquid bottle made entirely from recycled plastic, 10% of which is plastic collected from the ocean.

A worthy achievement, but one that still fails to entirely solve the problem of waste plastic in the ocean, as the bottle is just a ‘limited edition’ and the company admits that, “This year, we will be using one tonne of Ocean Plastic and we aim to increase to three tonnes next year.”

One company that does manage to achieve an all year round collection and recycling of raw material from ocean debris is Method. They also make soap, and sell it in bottles that are made from plastics sourced from the ocean.

To do this, as Forbes magazine reports, “The company has partnered with Sustainable Coastlines Hawaii and the Kōkua Hawaii Foundation to hand-pick more than a ton of plastic from local beaches.” The business model for this, as CEO and co-founder Adam Lowry explains is that they have “created a crowd source model for collecting plastic”.

This volunteer support needs training, as only some of the debris on the beach can be reclaimed, and even then the search for waste is focused on beaches where there is a high level of the polypropylene and high density polyethylene needed.

Even with this volunteer support, Lowry explains, Method still faces numerous problems to make its recycled plastics sourcing viable. “The material is not only difficult to collect, it’s also degraded, brittle, and hard to recycle.” This means that in the end, to create a quality plastic, it has to be mixed with other recycled plastic sources.

Given that as the Wall Street Journal reports, as much as “8.8 million metric tons of plastic waste are dumped in the world’s oceans each year.” then the efforts of Adidas, Method and Ecover begin to seem rather insignificant.

So given that recycling plastic from the ocean is so difficult, shouldn’t we be focusing on a different approach?

Lego, the Denmark-based makers of plastic toy bricks for the last 66 years, has decided to clean up its use of raw materials by promising to introduce “sustainable raw materials” to replace the petrochemical-based polymers it currently uses. This it hopes to achieve by the year 2030 at a cost of $150 million.

At present, according to Lego chemical engineers, ”the key raw material for the blocks is acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS), a copolymer of styrene and acrylonitrile synthesized in the presence of polybutadiene rubber”

This product is supplied by a firm called Styrolution, a spokesman from which explained to the American Chemical Society the problems Lego is facing, and why the change will take so long, and so much money.

“The building-block raw material has to be made to an exact specification so that the blocks lock together and then come apart with just the right amount of force. It is not your run-of-the-mill ABS.”

When, and if, Lego find their solution, it is certain not to be a perfect answer, as even oil free plastics have their problems. Bioplastics began to be developed and commercially tested in the 1950’s and are now used in countless products. But as world population soars and food prices rise, setting aside thousands of acres of land to grow plant to make into plastics is becoming less and less viable.

Maybe, that problem has now also been solved as a group of researchers at the Institute of Chemical and Bioengineering at the university ETH Zurich, have found a new way to make the PLA (polylactic acid) used in many bioplastics.

This new method uses glycerol, a waste product of biofuel production, and so saves energy and produces 20% less carbon dioxide than traditional production methods.

The method is explained further in the Smithsonian Magazine, which explains that, “Rather than using fermentation to create PLA, as is commonly done, the researchers teamed up with scientists from the university’s Advanced Catalysis Engineering group to create a custom catalyst. Made from a microporous mineral, the catalyst’s structure specifically promotes the desired chemical process.”

The end product still has its disadvantages, as it does not perform well when hot, so cannot replace plastics used in the microwave or in coffee cups, and it is of course, years away from being commercially produced.

But with developments like this, one can begin to wonder if we are on the cusp of new wave of sustainable plastics. For now it seems that there is no single solution to the amount of plastic-based waste that we produce, instead, it seems a combination of recycling and recreating may be the answer. With the initial, albeit small steps into reclaiming ocean plastic, mixed with investment from big businesses into sustainable plastics, and further developments and research into bioplastics, we may be on our way to maintaining a healthy industry and more importantly, a healthy planet.

Back in the day, buying chemicals meant making contacts among traders, manufacturers and suppliers. It was a very sociable act and generally involved a game of golf, perhaps a gin and tonic before lunch and then business. But who has time today, to spend five hours on the golf course and then two hours for lunch at the weekend, let alone on a week day?

So a new routine of business has developed, one that feels a lot faster, but isn’t necessarily any more effective or efficient. Nowadays, a chemicals trader has to spend the first hour or two of each morning wading through a mass of emails, before he or she can even begin to do some work. And when work does begin, what does it entail? Option 1: Picking up the phone or writing more emails asking for price quotes from the same old suppliers.

Option 2: Those who are more daring (or who have been in the business less time and so have fewer contacts) reach for the chemicals directory, in the hope of finding some new gem of a supplier.

The first option is conservative and reliable, and means that you will receive chemicals from trusted sources. It is a tried and tested route from people who you know (maybe even have met) and restricts the possibility of losing money to a dishonest businessman.

The second option requires some serious email writing or phone calling to persons unknown. The price might be better, and the conditions of sale more favourable, but you are left wondering if it is worth the risk. What is the value of a good night’s sleep against the fear of a deal going wrong with someone you haven’t met from the other side of the world, who you found out about from an advert in a magazine or (riskier still) an online banner ad? Better surely, to stick with who and what you know.

But even if you play it safe, there is the legwork required to process any order that has verbally or via email been agreed upon. This means obtaining authorisations and PO numbers, ordering items, notifying the accounts department and arranging for wire transfers.

There must be a better way.

There are many chemicals traders who yearn for a simpler way to do business, and many executives who yearn for a cheaper way. In today’s high-tech age where we even connect with our friends through a portal like facebook, it seems a simple, yet logical step to use the Internet.

We all know the power of the www. According to a recent Forbes magazine headline, “the B2B e-commerce market will be worth $6.7 Trillion by 2020″ with Alibaba (a business just 16 years old, making $27 billion of that business).

The rapid and exponential growth of a business like Alibaba is fascinating, as it shows the great advantages that can be had when using e-commerce, and must make every company ask whether it can survive today if it doesn’t use online trading.

More experienced readers may remember that it has been tried before. As Tony Ridnell, founder of TRInternational, Inc and member of the Board of Directors of America’s National Association of Chemical Distributors recalls, “At the millenium, there were in fact three dozen or so chemical exchanges that were destined to cause the end of the traditional model of chemical selling.”

So what did companies like ChemConnect, e-Chemical, and Elemica do wrong?

Maybe the market wasn’t ready. Maybe the remoteness of online trading was too scary back then. However, those three firms still exist (in one shape or another), although not the game-changers they were thought to be, they do still help chemicals traders do business, either by connecting clients or assisting with chemicals logistics.

Today, we are all much more confident at making personal purchases online, and businesses like Paypal and online banks have increased security measures greatly, such that buying from the Internet is now largely a stress and hassle free process.

Certainly one fear from online chemicals trading has been eliminated; the fear of doing business with dishonest traders. Whilst this can never be entirely eradicated, it is possible to establish an online service for users who have been verified as trustworthy and bona fide by financial ratings agencies. Such a service exists at Spotchemi.eu (who support this blog). They use agencies such as COFACE and Bisnode to vet companies before they can access the Spotchemi chemical trading portal.

Maybe a development like this means that we are on the cusp of changing the way chemicals are traded. But as it stands, it is one of the Internet’s strangest anomalies that the chemicals industry, whilst existing on cutting edge research and which employs highly technical staff and knowledgeable salesmen has not yet taken the leap towards online trading.

Every day we hear more and more about the power (both good and bad) of the web, and how the ‘Internet of Things’ will influence every part of our everyday lives. Maybe this is a blessing, maybe it is a curse.

As you read this blog, sent out across the electronic ether you may be bracing yourself for new ways to do business or maybe rushing with open arms towards the end of cold calling, email answering and overlong chemical conferences held in cities far from home. Of course you may just be hoping for the return of the golf course deal and the gin and tonic negotiations.

But the chemicals industry needs an online trading service. With chemicals’ markets and sources often continents apart it is such a natural step for online trading to take off. And when it does it would be for the benefit of all concerned.

There has been growing anger in recent years; hatred even. Not about the time wasted queueing at the post office, or how long it takes to commute to work these days, but a hatred for plastic bags.

Increasingly they are seen as a public danger. They litter our streets and oceans and fill up our landfill sites, and are fair game for abuse in the media. Evident when the UK’s Daily Mail newspaper  ran a ‘Banish the Bag’ campaign or the LA Times printed an editorial entitled ‘Plastic bags are an environmental menace’.

Media coverage like this has an impact, shown when a recent survey asked members of the British public if plastic bags should be banned, and 65% of respondents said ‘yes‘ . A belief supported by Greenpeace, who actively request members to, “Help put an end to this unnecessary pollution. Write a letter to your city council member and encourage them to ban plastic bags in your community.”

So why do people hate plastic bags?

Certainly they are a very visible part of the litter in the street, and their habit of getting caught in tree branches can make a flag for the cause of banning plastic bags.

Indeed, plastic bags are a far from perfect solution to carrying things, and they have huge drawbacks to both society and nature. For example, according to the World Wide Fund for Nature they ‘kill 100,000 whales, seals and turtles a year‘, as a result of eating of being trapped by plastic bags. They also take up landfill space and can take up to 1,000 years to anaerobically decompose fully.

Furthermore, Wikipedia states that, “12 million barrels of oil are used each year to make plastic bags for the American market.” and that, “A car could drive about 11 metres on the amount of petroleum used to make a single plastic bag.”

So what are plastic bags?

Lightweight bags are typically made from high-density polyethylene (HDPE) plastic. This is a durable, strong, yet (when formed thinly) flexible material. 85% of the resources for making HDPE is from a waste by-product from the natural gas refining process. If the ethane were not used in plastics production, it would have to be burned off somehow, anyway.

In fact, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, 191 million barrels of Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) and Natural Gas liquids (NGL) were used to make all American plastics. Those barrels equal 2.7% of American petroleum product usage. So the 12 million barrels used for plastic bag production constitute less than two tenths of one percent (0.169%) of American petroleum consumption.

This isn’t to argue that 12 million barrels a year isn’t a lot, but instead it is interesting to note how how such a marginal use of natural resources, has become so demonised in public opinion.

Why are people speaking so loudly against plastic bags, and not against people who drive to the local shops that are only one mile away, or people who replace their mobile phones every two years, or use the lift instead of walking up (or down) one or two flights of stairs?

Where is the campaign to ‘Ban car journeys shorter than 2 minutes’?

So why should people like plastic bags?

They are often labelled as ‘single use bags’, but are, more frequently than not, reused. For example, following the introduction of a bag tax in Ireland in 2002, green campaigners celebrated that  grocery bag usage had been reduced by 90%. Yet other plastic bag usage increased by 400%. The most likely cause for this being that reduced grocery bag usage meant that people simply began buying bags for the things they used grocery bags for, such as holding domestic waste.

There is also much controversy over the claim that ‘100,000 marine animals die each year from plastic bags’, with many questioning the data behind it. This is because the figures are allegedly from a misinterpretation of a 1987 Canadian study in Newfoundland. The study noting that 100,000 marine animals were killed from discarded plastic fishing nets.

As The Times (of London) reported, “ Fifteen years later in 2002, when the Australian Government commissioned a report into the effects of plastic bags, its authors misquoted the Newfoundland study, mistakenly attributing the deaths to ‘plastic bags’. It was only in 2006 that the authors altered the report, replacing ‘plastic bags’ with ‘plastic debris’. But they admitted: “The actual numbers of animals killed annually by plastic bag litter is nearly impossible to determine.”

If a government commission can misunderstand scientific data, then it is understandable how the media and public can also make ill-informed opinions. This is a dangerous combination, as media and public pressure have a huge influence on government policy.

Pop-science, whilst seemingly opening up the amazing world of science to the man on the street, can have a very detrimental affect. As Lord Taverne, the chairman of Sense about Science, states, “This is one of many examples where you get bad science leading to bad decisions which are counter-productive. Attacking plastic bags makes people feel good but it doesn’t achieve anything.”

So what should plastic bag makers do?

There are three possible ways to tackle the ‘problem with plastic bags’. The first is to make greater efforts to recycle and reuse them. At present, as the US Environmental Protection Agency states, only 14% of plastics in the category that includes ‘bags, sacks and wraps’ is recycled (albeit better than the 9% of total plastic waste).

However, beyond the current actions of Local Councils promoting waste seperation at point of use, and the separate collection days for different wastes, there seems to be little that can be cost effectively done,  in both dollar and natural resource terms. The acquiring, usage and disposal of plastic bags comes from individual household behaviour. Only re-educating will change this behaviour.

The second is to increase efforts to improve bags’ biodegradability. Much work has been done on this, but a plastic bag that is as compostable as paper has yet to be found, and until this happens, they will always be seen as the worse option at the supermarket checkout.

The final option is to explain to people that these bags do not lead to the destruction of the planet. If people understood that they are made out of a process’s waste product, are frequently reused in homes and do not kill nearly as much as claimed, then public perception may well change.

Given that two of these three solutions require changes in public action or opinion, then perhaps the best solution is to increase investment in environmentally sustainable plastics. Whilst this option does require a lot of industry will and plenty of money, it is a comparatively easy choice. Because when it comes to the science of plastics, re-educating the public is the hardest option of all.