Resultaten van het onderzoek: Schatting van de besparing van energie en de uitstoot van broeikasgassen bereikt door de totale markt van kunststof producten in West-Europa.
The Contribution of Plastic Products to Resource Efficiency
Goal of the study
Plastic products are made of energy resources. Additionally, their production needs further energy resources. Nevertheless, plastic products frequently enable energy savings from the perspective of the energy balance of the total life cycle compared to the energy balance of an alternative material. Examples for such energy savings by plastic products are:
- Substitution of materials which consume much more energy for production of the same functional unit (e.g. glass)
- Performance of a certain function with much less material (e.g. packaging)
- Fuel savings because of reduction in mass (transport, cars)
- Energy savings due to thermal insulation (where insulation with other materials would be less effective, technically complicated or too expensive)
- Savings of resources by avoiding losses or damage of packed products.
The purpose of this study is to estimate the savings of energy and greenhouse gas emissions achieved by the total market of plastic products in Western Europe by means of a projection based on a sufficient number of examples.