Plastics Weekly: Honda, Nissan Build Supply Chains for Recycled Plastic

Welcome to the Plastics Weekly, NEO’s regular news monitoring of the plastics industry.

This week’s highlights:

• Japanese automakers Honda Motor and Nissan Motor are building supply chains for recycled plastic, driven by proposed environmental rules in Europe. The aim is to make their vehicles greener and comply with expected new European regulations by recycling plastic from scrapped cars. Under a 2023 proposal by the European Commission, at least 25% of a new vehicle’s plastic would have to be recycled plastic. This regulation would take full effect as early as 2031, raising the possibilty of noncompliant new vehicles being barred from sale in the European Union. (Nikkei Asia)
• Scientists in Germany have discovered a type of fungi that is capable of breaking down synthetic plastics, offering a potential new weapon in the global fight against plastic pollution. A team at the Leibniz Institute of Freshwater Ecology and Inland Fisheries in Berlin found that certain microfungi can survive exclusively on plastics, degrading them into simpler forms. The discovery could help clean up the world’s oceans, among other applications. (The Independent)
• Are the Paris Olympics beeing greenwashed? This year’s Games promised to be the most eco-friendly in history, using half the amount of single-use plastic compared with London 2012. But French environmental groups have criticised the main sponsor, Coca-Cola, for what they said were millions of plastic drink bottles being needlessly poured into millions of plastic cups — a double use of plastic that activists say amounts to “greenwashing.” (The Guardian)