- A guest post by Sandra Garcia

Every year, parents are obligated to buy their kids (whether they like it or not) school supplies, and you can bet that pencils are on the list.

Moms and dads might be surprised to find out that those little orange sticks are made out of the 4 billion trees cut down worldwide for paper industries, and assembled with toxic chemicals in factories that pollute the air (most erasers are made from latex). After much sharpening, they are then thrown away to rest in landfills. It’s estimated that 14 billion wood pencils are made each year, and scientists have stated – to little effect – that the manufacturing process of office and school products is damaging to the environment. In fact, after construction and consumer use, these items are one of the world’s top dump-fillers.

New companies have emerged to combat the misuse of the planet’s resources for the paper and office supply industries. One such company that has emerged and specialized in recycled pencils is Earthzone, based in Vancouver, B.C. Canada. In 2005, architect and filmmaker Matty Scolozzi was unsatisfied with the slow pace of his career and created Earthzone out of a desire to start a creative business, and his passion to encourage people to save the Earth.

To make recycled pencils, Earthzone takes used, whole newspaper sheets (sourced from both Canada and USA), flattens and cuts them, then wraps the pencil graphite with a water-based glue. Other recycled pencil companies have a similar manufacturing process. Even consumers who are already buying and using these types of pencils may not know is that the shavings from sharpening can also be recycled. Re-using a four-foot stack of newspapers to make these pencils can save a 40-foot pine tree.

Because the pencils are virtually air-free, they are almost impossible to break and will last up to three times more than wood pencils, which answers many parents’ qualms about eco-friendly supplies costing more than their counterparts. Over time, buying green can save you from buying more!

And, gone are the days of the boring orange pencil. Now, recycled pencils have expanded to include colored, artist, scented, and unpainted pencils that expose the newsprint the pencil was made of. An example of this is Earthzone’s Special Edition Recycled Pencil. There are so many options out there that you can be certain you’ll find a brand or type that is to your and your children’s liking.

Skeptics will say that these small items will make little impact to improve the environment, but entrepreneurs like Scolozzi are confident that every bit helps, especially when the process of making a green product doesn’t harm the Earth. Numbering in the millions of dollars, the eco-friendly product industry is a profitable one, and Earthzone alone will make six-figures by the end of the year. As long as the demand continues to grow for all products like recycled pencils to be green-made, it will just be a matter of time before other corporations follow.

About Earthzone:

Founded in 2005, Earthzone created a line of recycled pencils, which are distributed by six national distributors, including Chapters Indigo and Basics Office Products. Earthzone plans to make other sustainable products by January 2010, and to sell 30 more products by next fall. Earthzone is committed to conducting ethical and responsible business, based on principles of environmental preservation and professionalism. www.Earthzone.com

The eco-conscious consumer knows a thousand ways to be green: take the bus to work, turn lights off when you leave the house, and of course, compost and recycle. Recycling initiatives are on the rise in communities around the world, but individual programs are only part of the solution. Waste, and the potential gains from recycling, are far higher in the commercial and industrial sectors than in the residential one. For example, the production of one car creates 8000kg of raw material residue, according to the United Nations Environmental Program.

Consumer companies differ in how well they’ve embraced sustainability initiatives. A new website, GoodGuide.com, rates products and companies on environmental, health, and social criteria. Using over 200 data points, they produce a 0-10 rating on the sustainability of over 62,000 products. Focusing on just a few of those data points gives a view into the most proactive companies:

Best Companies on Recycled Materials – This list orders companies based on their commitment to use or manufacture recycled materials. Many of the companies on this list are food companies: Chiquita Brands, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, and the Heinz Frozen Food Company.

Best Companies for Carbon Footprint – Food companies also top this list of companies with the lowest contribution to global warming. Bob Evans Food, Nestle, and Dreyer’s Ice Cream are all in the best list.

In addition to environmental responsibility, companies are also accountable to their customers and employees. GoodGuide provides ratings on these qualities as well:

Best Family Friendly Companies – Companies are rated on whether it provides day care services or extra maternity leave beyond the legal minimum, and whether the company has won a family-friendly prize like a Working Mother Award. Perhaps surprisingly, big drug companies top this list: Merck, Bristol Myers Squibb and GlaxoSmithKline score very well.

Best Companies for Retirement Benefits – When companies are rated according to their retirement benefits programs, there are some well-known standouts: the 3M company, makers of Scotch Tape, and California Pizza Kitchen.

Consumers are often looking for the best way to make a positive impact on the environment. Starting recycling programs in homes and communities is a great start. Another good step: Buying from companies who have programs that you believe in.

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When you recycle your toner cartridge, you preserve the environment while lessening the toll of printing costs on your pocketbook as well.

Reusing, Recycling, and Using Self-Refill Kits

These days, throwing your toner cartridge in the trash is not just a waste; it’s like throwing money away while unnecessarily filling landfills at the same time.

The best alternative to throwing your toner cartridges out is to recharge them with new toner.

Manufacturers can also replace the drums and other important parts of the cartridge.

Some retail shops accept trade-ins for spent toner cartridges, when you purchase a new one from them. These cartridges are then refilled so that they can be sold at discounted prices. Self-refill kits are also available.

Depending on the type of toner cartridge you use, there are many different refill kits available. These kits make recycling toner cartridges simple and cheap.

Most refill kits come with instructions, and the toner is contained inside a plastic bottle. You won’t need any special tools other than a smoldering iron.

How to Recycle Your Own Toner Cartridge

Here are four basic steps you can take to recycle your own toner cartridge:

1. Remove the toner cartridge from the printer.
2. Using the soldering iron, carefully burn a small hole into the cartridge casing, without damaging the casing. Do not employ a drill to create the hole, as it can cause miniscule pieces of plastic to fall inside the cartridge’s chamber.
3. Pour the toner in through the fill-hole. Note that manufacturers recommend not filling the chamber completely, especially if a cartridge has been used multiple times.
4. Seal the hole with tape once you’ve poured the appropriate amount of toner into the cartridge.
5. Take care when handling the toner, as it can damage clothing, furniture, the carpet, etc. Further, many toners are hazardous; take necessary precautions by wearing gloves, and keep the toner out of reach of children.

Due to their non-biodegradable nature, most toner cartridges end up in landfills.  But if you recycle your toner cartridges, or buy re-manufactured ones, you can help eliminate waste and save on landfill space.  And that saves on disposal costs as well. Purchasing re-manufactured toner cartridges, on the other hand, allows you to avoid messes. These are available from your local office supply, and at specialty stores.

Additionally, some retailers, upon delivering your newly purchased re-manufactured cartridges, will pick up your old toner cartridges. Over the last few years, toner cartridge re-manufacturers have improved their technology to the extent that their quality can meet the manufacturer’s OEM standards. And what’s more, most re-manufactured cartridges provide good quality prints, coupled with a low occurrence of malfunction and leakage.

A DIY Recycling Project

This simple DIY recycling project can be used for educational purposes, as a school or class activity for kids, or when you really do want to recycle your own paper.

It serves as a good demonstration of how recycling works, and anyone who has gone through with this process is likely to think twice in the future, before discarding waste paper into the wrong basket.

While I doubt that any resources were really saved in this video (the energy and materials consumed by the process probably far outweigh the value of a couple of sheets of paper), it serves an educational purpose.

It also demonstrates another important fact – recycling itself, as a process, consumes energy and resources.  The fact that one is going to recycle certain waste doesn’t mean that no waste management is necessary at all.

Recycling may be better than filling a landfill, but when all is said and done, the less excessive garbage produced, the better.

There is no need for old, replaced, or even obsolete electronics to go to waste.  It can be reused, repurposed, or recycled, and in more ways than one.

This very amusing video will make you think twice the next time you’re about to toss your 1980s walkman or you 2007 computer; and will give you some ideas on how to better approach the issue.

The first time I heard of the phrase Cradle to Cradle (C2C) was when a friend told me take a bath with a book called Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things. The reason for the bath and the book at the same time? The book is printed on synthetic ‘paper,’ made from plastic resins and inorganic filters, and is designed to “look and feel like top quality paper while also being waterproof and rugged.” The book can be recycled in all areas where polypropylene (think yogurt containers) recycling is available and can be reused for a lifetime, barring any contact with fire or radioactive materials.

I quickly became intrigued with the book and plowed my way through it. The ideal behind Cradle to Cradle design is that of the design of the book: use, recycle, reuse. C2C is the anti-thesis of single-use throw away design that dominated American capitalism in the last half of the 20th century. It is a relatively new idea—simple in conception, difficult in reality—that is creating quite the buzz throughout the “green” industry.

The current buzz from C2C is the result of Michael Braungart and William McDonough, the authors of the previously mentioned book. Although others conceived of the idea before them, they are largely responsible for the recent popularization of the term. Their book is the first manifesto of the C2C movement and an excellent introduction to this revolutionary school of design.

Cradle-to-cradle products, as opposed to cradle-to-grave products, are designed and produced to be “perpetually circulated in a closed loop,” thus maximizing their value while simultaneously reducing damage to ecosystems. C2C seeks to eliminate “waste” altogether.

The language of C2C design can be complex, but understanding only a few terms will give you a basic understanding of the philosophy. Braungart and McDonough split up all materials into two categories: technical and biological nutrients. A biological nutrient is “a biodegradable material posing no immediate or eventual hazard to living systems that can be used for human purposes and can safely return to the environment to feed environmental processes,” while a technical nutrient is “a material that remains in a closed-loop system of manufacture, reuse, and recovery (the technical metabolism), maintaining its value through many product life cycles.”

In an ideal world, Braungart and McDonough would like to see products solely designed by C2C protocols and entirely composed of either biological or technical nutrients. This would ensure a truly sustainable economy, one that not only reduces resource use in the present, but also guarantees those resources’ health in the future.

Unfortunately this ideal world does not exist and probably never will, but Braungart and McDonough have conceived a ‘C2C Certification’ that rates nearly any type of human product: consumer items, buildings, cities, social systems, and more. Although the certification system was initially slow in gaining traction, entire cities in China could become certified in the near future.

According to Braungart and McDonough’s company website, C2C certification “provides a company with a means to tangibly, credibly measure achievement in environmentally-intelligent design and helps customers purchase and specify products that are pursuing a broader definition of quality… This means using environmentally safe and healthy materials; design for material reutilization, such as recycling or composting; the use of renewable energy and energy efficiency; efficient use of water, and maximum water quality associated with production; and instituting strategies for social responsibility.”

Hundreds of products have become C2C-certified and more are in the process. To learn more about certification, check out the site, which gives an overview of the certification process and the requirements to become certified.

C2C design is incredibly important as the United States and the world transitions into a clean energy and green economy. Simply reducing consumption and building renewable energy projects is not enough because it is not genuinely sustainable for the future. Concentrating on creating processes and products that do away with consumption altogether is what C2C is about and that is the model the new economy needs.

When I was a young child, I used to put a certain small 45 rpm Sesame Street record on my Fisher Price record player.  The record had Kermit the Frog repeatedly singing, “It’s Not Easy Bein’ Green.”  Today, as a mature, suit-and-tie-wearing frog, working in a marketing department of a large corporation, Kermit would easily refine his identity-conflict tune to “It’s Not Easy Marketing Green.”

According to the American Marketing Association, “Green Marketing” is defined as the development and marketing of products designed to minimize negative effects on the physical environment or to enhance its quality.  However, applying a concrete definition to such a slippery concept, which has taken many forms and shapes over the years, has proven to be anything but simple or manageable.  And, as you have seen on our Source and Resource site thus far, green marketing can include a variety of activities in diverse areas.

In general, a company’s green strategies has involved any of the following: 1) improving efficiencies in the production process, 2) changes in advertising style, and/or 3) taking greater account of a firm’s wastefulness of the earth’s resources, pollution and its release of toxins into the atmosphere.

Ever since Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reports first emerged in the late 1980s alongside a company’s annual financial reports, firms’ environmental considerations have manifested in various (some may say ‘nebulous’) commitments, promises, and proclamations.  Some half-hearted, some gracefully fulfilled.  Such actions have ranged from recycling waste in industrial processes to a company exclusively using recycled paper; from a firm’s increased efficiency in the utilization of energy and materials, to improved logistics management for cutting down transportation emissions; and, even from transforming plastic waste into pencils, to donating employees’ used eyeglasses to a program called Vision Aid Overseas.

As we have all witnessed, consumer and corporate environmental consciousness has dramatically elevated in recent years.  Related news, events, and proposed legislation seem to emerge and change at warp speed.  More apparent causes and effects of global climate change, depleting fisheries, deforestation, and the current energy and impending water crises have all caused people to reassess what they put in their cupboards, dishwashers, and gas tanks, along with what they do with such things once they’ve been used.

Because of this intensified environmental awareness, it has become increasingly important how a firm deals with such global challenges.  Or, one might argue, it may be even more crucial how a firm is viewed in approaching such issues.  In this manner, CSR environmental behavior and “cleantech” investments have become essential to a company’s core operations, regardless of the sector in which the company operates.  That is, companies are not only sensing the rising accountability demands of shareholders, the public, and governmental bodies, but also the opportunities involved in a “green products” market estimated at US$209 billion.

Along the years, many corporate executives acquired newfound headaches attempting to navigate through the ever-shifting Green landscape.  Sometimes, it would seem as if all good deeds went punished, or, at best, unrecognized, and all “regular” activities were hyper-scrutinized.  Yet, nearly all will tell you that such experiences were tremendous learning opportunities and that it is quite important for companies to stay active, involved and persist in the green marketplace.  Unlike the first environmental movements of the 1970s and 1980s, this Green Marketing movement is a core business paradigm that is here to stay.  And, as executives are quickly learning, businesses not only need patience, but also much guidance along the way.

In addition to what Greg has been doing with critical updates on resources and news on sustainable, green business practices, this column provides the latest innovative approaches to green business strategies and corporate environmental marketing.  This will include a greater background understanding of the issues, theories, and policies involved, as well as insight from leading experts of where the green marketing movement has been, what it has learned, why, and where it is today.  We will explore how firms are overcoming the green marketing challenges and where they are seeking and finding new opportunities; how they are positioning themselves and where they are investing. We will search for answers to the key question, “How do firms embrace the holistic approach to green marketing that, although initially seems quite daunting and elusive, could provide a wealth of innovative and environmentally sustainable opportunities?”

You all secretly or visibly have the same situation—a pile in some dark corner of your office filled with old, broken, and unused computer parts, screens, VCR players, and a copier machine from 1987.   Maybe you’re waiting for the computer geek neighbor to pick them up and reassemble them into some suspicious looking contraption.  Or perhaps you simply have no idea how to dispose of them.

Fortunately there is a growing trend among communities and businesses to not only to do something with these old electronics, but to recycle them too.  Often referred to as “E-waste,” many cities now have places for you to drop off the goods so they can be taken to a recycling center.  Companies likes Best Buy are also starting to accept used electronics as part of their effort to create a greener commercial operation.  You can also set up a contract with a waste disposal company like WasteManagment, who will reliably take care of your E-Waste so you don’t even have to leave the office.  Of course, the first step is seeing if the equipment is still functioning; if so, there is usually a donation center in your community that will take the material and pass it on to an underprivileged-youth program.

Why is it important to recycle obsolete electronics?  The first reason is that there are still components in broken office equipment that can be extracted and reused for other technological applications.  Copper, platinum, and even lead ought to be recycled and turned into new products instead of sitting eternally in a landfill.  According to some estimates, over 200,000 computers are thrown into a landfill every single day in the United States.  The EPA found that 2.5 million tons of computers and electronics were dumped in 2007 alone.

Landfilling old office equipment not only unnecessarily takes up space in our nation’s dumps, it is environmentally hazardous.  Lead, mercury and other nasty technological components used to maximize product performance are lethal at the end of their life cycle.  These chemicals will percolate into the ground and eventually enter our drinking water.

So, there are at least five reasons to finally reconsider downsizing that pile in your office basement:
1.    reduce unnecessary waste in landfills
2.    prevent the contamination of ground water
3.    contribute to the generation of new products from reclaimed materials
4.    create more space in your office
5.    and of course, further the goals of your business’ sustainability goals

For details about where to recycle, your best bet is to go to http://earth911.com to find the nearest recycling center.

At some point, we have all been critical of corporate greenwashing. It is common to hear reports of companies adopting eco-friendly technologies for good PR or to benefit from government incentives. Some of these firms dubiously publicize their production process as being ‘green’ without actually endorsing the initiatives that they promise to undertake — there is a wide gap between supporting a green technology and adopting it. Further, with the economic meltdown hammering stock markets across the world, most of the global-scale private firms have toned down their investment in green technologies. For these reasons, it is heartening to see that IBM has taken the initiative to honestly and reasonably present its green efforts for the 2008 – 09 fiscal.

IBM has always been at the forefront of reducing energy use in its workplace and production environments, not to mention its efforts to use innovative technologies to curb greenhouse emissions and reduce hazardous wastes being dumped into landfills. The company started the trend of owning-up to its individual performance from a green & sustainable business practice perspective as a part of its annual Corporate Responsibility Report.

What is remarkable is that the Report does not try to promote the fact that it is sincerely committed to the cause of making itself environmentally compatible. Instead, the Report merely tries to educate people about the progress and even the drawbacks that IBM came across when trying walk along the greener route of conducting its business. The Report is truly exhaustive in its nature, spilling over more than 43 pages. It is precise in accounting for the performance of every green initiative across a wide array of company functions, from the supply chain, to community-cause related endeavors, to corporate governance, right down to among the employees. The Report highlights IBM’s efforts to  develop a more responsible global brand, supporting water conservation and helping develop energy-efficient workplace communities, while presenting an honest reflection of IBM’s slow transformation from energy dependent to truly “green.”

The noteworthy performance indicators of the Report are:

Conservation of Energy
•    Savings made by continuing with conservation projects have gone past the annual goal of 3.5%
•    Energy savings equaled 6.1% of the total energy use for 2008.
This translates into savings of:
235 million kilowatt electric hours
6.3 million gallons of fuel savings
215,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions

Overall, the total savings made through various conservation methods yielded $32.3 million in energy cost savings. Most of the energy saving projects were executed in IBM’s data centers that have conventionally used high-energy server operations.

Controlling Greenhouse Gas Emissions

•    Purchase of renewable energy increased to 450 million kWh in 2008
•    This equals 8.6% of IBM’s global electricity use for the year
•    This means a total reduction in CO2 emissions, due to energy use, by nearly 1.6 %

IBM has already been sensitive to its CO2 emission levels and it reduced the same by nearly 40% from 1999 to 2005. Not satisfied with this, the greenhouse gas emission reduction percentage has now been projected at 12% by 2012.

Controlling PFC Emissions — toward the end of 2008, the PFC emissions in CO2 were down by 30.4% in comparison to the 1995 baseline. PFC (Perfluorocompounds) is released during the production of semiconductors and IBM seeks to reduce it by another 25 % by 2010.

Managing End-of-Life Products — IBM produced 42,302 metric tons of waste products in 2008 that were further processed for proper disposal. Only 0.6% of it found its way to the landfills or got smoked in the incineration facilities. In 2007, this figure was a bit high at 0.8%. This means that in 2008, IBM was able to recycle or re-use more than 99% of its products that had reached the end of their lifecycle.

Recycling Plastic — Annual goal of recycling used plastic products is 5%.
Figures for:
2007: 10.6%
2008: 10.3% (a shortfall of 0.3%)

Minimizing Hazardous Waste — in 2007, hazardous waste products were reduced by 8,400 metric tons.
2008: 10,900 metric tons

Recycling Non-hazardous Waste — Annual goal for recycling non-hazardous waste products is 75%. Figures for:
2007: 78%
2008: 79%

Water Conservation — The figures released for conserving water are based upon IBM’s performance in its microelectronics manufacturing process. The annual goal is to conserve about 2% of the total volume of water used for this process, over a period of five years.
Figures for:
2007: 6%
2008: 4.6%

If you choose to be critical, it can be observed that in terms of year-on-year progress, IBM has not taken any substantial steps for endorsing newer, more innovative technologies. Most of the conservational technologies used earlier have been continued with, albeit their effectiveness has increased in some cases. However, it should be understood that given the size of IBM’s worldwide operations, it is comparatively difficult for it to adopt new conservation or recycling methods across all its facilities. Nearly every new technology that it adopts needs to be radically modified for vastly-different regional requirements.

What should be complimented is that even during an economically-challenging environment, the company has sustained its efforts towards actually adopting environmentally-responsible, greener business practices. IBM’s ability to sustain its progress on a greener path while keeping its business practices equally profitable should be a role model to smaller businesses that argue about the impracticalness of adopting greener production/manufacturing technologies. Further, IBM’s method of publicizing its green performance on an annual basis should influence other companies to come forth with their own honest progress reports. Perhaps, then, all businesses can learn from the successes and failures of their neighbors, and the business sector can make legitimate movement towards a sustainable economy.

The Plastics 2020 Challenge Takes Global Centrestage

An alliance of the worldwide plastic industry, consisting of leading trade associations, has been forged to ensure that they are able to alter the common perception that the plastic industry is environmentally-insensitive. This significant development has come about in the form of ‘The Plastics 2020 Challenge’ organized by PlasticsEurope, the British Plastics Federation and the Packaging & Films Association. The Challenge would represent the innovative and eco-friendly efforts of about 5,000 plastic companies.

As part of this campaign, the concerned entities would try to incorporate the use of lightweight plastics along with developing new ways in which plastic products can be recycled without any substantial carbon emissions. This essentially means that the brands registered under this forum would seek more cooperation from the government agencies involved in developing greener technologies, particularly those concerned with recycling. One of the objectives would be to develop affordable waste-to-energy technologies when recycling does not seem like an economically-feasible option.

Plastics 2020: The Outline

The forum has emphasized that they want to double the recycling rate for plastic packaging and other products by 2020. This will be combined with an effort to limit the volume of plastic wastes being dumped in landfills.

Challenge 2020 endorses an easy-to-understand tag line for educating people about its efforts. This is being promoted as the ‘Four Rs’:

•    Reduce — restricting plastic wastage by phasing-out plastic products that don’t present a recycling option. This means a commitment towards introducing high-performance plastic materials.
•    Reuse — gradually increase the use of thinner and low-emission plastics for packaging and constructional purposes. These plastics are as reusable as conventional plastics but have a lesser impact on the environment.
•    Recycle — seeking support from industrial conglomerates and government agencies for increasing the efficiency with which used plastics are transformed into safe, affordable products. This includes creating sustainable international markets that would endorse this new range of refurbished plastics.

•    Recover — creating a safer and more sustainable method for eliminating plastic products that cannot be safely recycled. This means researching new waste disposal techniques for end-of-life plastics.

Plastic Use & Contemporary Business Practices: Understanding the Predicament

If you consider the relevancy of the Plastics 2020 Challenge, it would seem that it couldn’t have been timed any better. Although there is a great emphasis upon adopting greener business practices across the globe, there is lot of confusion regarding its feasibility and method of adoption. For example, among the latest plastic-centered green building technologies is the Translucent Roofing System that is used for controlling the amount of natural light entering the living spaces and it is recyclable.

There is also a gradual shift towards using an innovative plastic-based, nano-porous insulation material. However, apart from a handful of such examples there is a serious dearth of adopting greener plastics into the modern business segment, particularly in creating sustainable homes.

The Problem — The general perception is that plastics have an extremely negative environmental impact and their use should be avoided. However, plastics produced from a single polymer with negligible additives can be easily recycled and have appreciably low carbon emissions. A notable example is the construction industry that presents a confusing picture wherein PVC, polybutylene, polypropylene and polyethylene are being used with varying interpretations about their environmental impact.

The notion that PVC shouldn’t be used for houses based on the green construction platform was severely challenged in 2007 by the US Green Building Council. According to this organization’s report, though much-maligned, PVC was not as environmentally-challenging in comparison to some of the ‘supposedly’ greener materials preached for being used in roofings, pipes, sheet floorings, window frames and claddings.

As a result, there is a great debate over the environmental footprints of PVC. Now, polyethylene, polybutylene and polypropylene are being increasingly substituted for PVC-based constructional products since they don’t contain harmful chemicals chlorine. Yes, these plastics are more environmentally compatible than PVC but their production is heavily dependent of fossil fuels. There are many other plastic options besides these three that haven’t been explored, or more critically, they haven’t been presented in an adoptable format.

Plastics 2020: A Step In The Right Direction

If the above-illustrated example of using plastics for creating greener and more sustainable homes is continued with, the Challenge 2020 will educate its members about various mediums to help businesses understand Sustainable Construction. This would include issues such as decoding carbon footprints of PVC windows, plastic water pipes and use of plastic foam insulation. Resource efficiency of a building is still a grey area for most businesses. For example, plastics foams are cost effective and environmentally friendly and expanded polystyrene insulation helps to conserve energy within an establishment. Similarly, the new-age version of plastics pipes has a lesser ecological impact than concrete and iron pipes and being extremely lightweight, they help to save on transport costs.

This is how the utility of the Plastics 2020 forum will come to the fore — educating businesses about various kinds of plastics that can be incorporated for affordably, adopting greener technologies.