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Editorial
Happy New Year
„You should take things as they come. But you should also make sure they come as you'd like to take them!"
This is my favorite maxim and has helped me during some difficult situations.
I also received a Christmas Greeting with a very nice piece of wisdom: "You can always do more than you think and always think more than you do!"
Maybe, if some of the participants at the climate conference had understood the meaning of these sayings, they might have avoided the invitable flop. But the lack of insight began much earlier:
Some time before the Copenhagen Conference my daughter came home from school and asked me seriously, how I could possibly make my income working for such a climate damaging industry! Her class teacher had told them how much damage the use of plastics was causing the environment and that it was nothing more than harmful chemistry.
I almost exploded with anger - so to put it plainly; as long as our children continue to grow up with such incompetent prejudices - and Europe is supposed to be an enlightened region - what does that mean for the rest of the world. In some regions the problem of climate damaging is still growing due to social development and in some other regions ignorance knows no boundaries.
So "dear teachers" here are some facts from PlasticsEurope (the European plastics association) presented prior to the Copenhagen conference:
1. Substitution of plastics, where feasible, with traditional materials would:
- Generate 3.7 times more mass (impacting waste management)
- Result in 50% more GHG (120 million tonnes per annum) and
- Lead to 46% more energy being consumed (2 300 TJ, Tera = 1012)
2. Plastics represent a small proportion of the average European's carbon footprint (1.3%)
- The carbon balance (the ratio of the carbon intensity of production in relation to the savings and benefits across the life cycle) is presently in the range of 5-9
- This carbon ratio is set to improve to between 9-15 by 2020; indicating that the benefits in use in the future are far higher than the additional emissions from the growth of plastics
- Plastics materials play a key role in the generation of renewable energy
- Plastics are an enabler of new technologies which significantly reduce resource use (e.g. de-materialisation in memory cards or MP3 players)
- Plastics used for thermal insulation, for food packaging or to produce renewable energy enable extraordinary "use"-benefits.
Birgit Harreither
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