Le plastique - Entrée en matière

26/01/12

DID YOU SAY "BIO-BASED"?

After food and textiles, the organic trend is continuing to spread. Organically-based plastics, biodegradable plastics, bioplastics, biopolymers...So many names.But what exactly do they all mean? We try and cut through the maze!
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• Part I : WANTED - RENEWABLE PLASTIC RESOURCES
• Part II : BIO-BASED PLASTICS AT THE CROSSROADS

21/12/11

Plastics to the aid of energy control

Plastic bring their fair share of solutions when faced with challenges related to global warming. Industries nowadays devote a large part of their research to developing new materials that meet increasingly high environmental requirements.
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• Part I : Plastics at work in passive houses
• Part II : The future of plastic solar panels

19/05/11

UPCYCLING: ETHICAL AND AESTHETIC RECYCLING

Several years ago, a new word entered our vocabulary, without our knowing exactly what it meant: Upcycling, a new trend found in all four corners of the world.
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• Part I : Recycling from the bottom up
• Part II : The precursors: the developing countries
• Part III : Young designers, industrialists…Westerners are now joining in too

24/01/11

EXOTIC FORMULA: PLASTIC BRICKS

What do modest Brazilian dwellings, a school in Guatemala, emergency shelters in Haiti or the futuristic Taipei Floral Pavilion have in common? They are all made from old plastic bottles. Local initiatives, individual inventions or methods patented by industrialists all form part of this surprising, economical and, above all, ecological solution: building so as to not throw anything away.
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• Part I : Polli-brick, a revolutionary high-tech process
• Part II : Eco-Tec: building your own house in Latin America
• Part III : A good dose of grey matter and a bit of elbow grease

24/09/10

ENVIRONMENT: AN INFORMED CONSUMER IS A WISE CONSUMER

Faced with growing consumer demand for environmental information on the products they buy, governments, distributors, businesses and others are stepping up the drive to develop product environmental labelling systems.
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• Part I : Better labelling for wiser buying
• Part II : A mini-glossary of environmental terms

29/04/10

THE SECOND LIFE OF PLASTICS

Recycling and energy recovery: at the end of their lives, plastics are still full of resources provided, proactive policies enable them achieve their full potential, and abandoning them to landfill becomes just a bad memory.
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26/04/10

Zoom on a photovoltaic vineyard

The French vineyard that produces something really surprising! Chanos-Courson could be one of those typically quiet Provence villages where the only excitement for the few tourists staying in the gites might be watching the cultivation of wine, apricots and nuts. But visitors might be intrigued to know what else happens here!
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25/11/09

European Sustainable Consumption Production Policies

One of the key objectives of the EU is to integrate environmental sustainability with economic growth and welfare. But the consequences of climate change and the growing demand for energy and resources challenge this objective.
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27/10/09

Better Health from Clear Water

Ray Hammond, author of The World In 2030, had concluded his study warning us that one of the main challenges the Earth would have to face would be the lack of drinking water. The plastics industry had sponsored this study in order to know in what direction its research would best be directed. The portable Lifestraw® Family water purification system, manufactured by the Swiss company Vestergaard Frandsen, thanks to a plastic resin from BASF is the result of one of these research studies.
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01/07/09

Zero Energy Buildings: Opportunity for Plastics

Starting in 2019 all new buildings constructed in the EU will have to produce on-site more renewable energy on-site than they consume. This is the result of a revision by the European Parliament of the directive dealing with buildings’ energy performance.
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