Executive Report of Green and Low Carbon Development of China's Plastics Industry
Plastics began to be mass-produced in 1950. Thanks to their light, durable and useful attributes, the plastics industry quickly became the largest user of petrochemical products. Today, the majority of the production capacity of China's petrochemical industry is used to produce the basic raw materials for plastics: ethylene and propylene. Between 2016 and 2020, 2.2 billion tons of plastics were produced worldwide1 . According to the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, without actions to control plastic use, the global production of plastic materials, compared with 2014 levels, is expected to double and reach 600 million tons by 2035. The annual plastic production will almost quadruple to 1.13 billion tons by 2050 .