Boe Pahari, Chairman and Founder of VisionEdgeOne, sees the plastic waste space as an area in need of significant investments to prevent one of largest the structural challenges today in societies globally.

During the last half-century, the use of plastic has grown significantly to a current consumption of about 450 million tonnes p.a. in OECD countries and it has become essential to modern living through critical applications in the food-, pharmaceutical and many other industries. Plastic is a durable, versatile, lightweight, and a cost-effective material with rich features such as corrosion resistance, easy sterilization, shatter-proof and non-permeable that is helping us to address pressing concerns pertaining to, among other, growing food waste as well as transportation fuel consumption. However, with the vast use of plastic, we are faced with a growing waste problem as most plastic products are non-biodegradable, and waste is insufficiently treated. In fact, more than 20% of plastic waste is mismanaged and every year 19-23 million tonnes of plastic waste leaks into aquatic ecosystems, according to the United Nations. Around 50% of all plastic waste ends up at landfill sites where natural decomposition can take up to 1,000 years. Close to 20% of plastic waste is being incinerated, which is somewhat better due to energy recovery, yet still responsible for substantial amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. 1 While many countries have taken important measures, recycling rates remain low with only 10% in OECD countries and about 30% across EU countries 2 . Consequently, the European Union is pushing for a circular economy calling for increased recycling and energy recovery, preventing landfill and incineration, and major investments throughout the recycling value chain. 3

Identifying opportunities that best respond to the global forces of disruption is a key part of our strategy, and the plastic waste challenge is an excellent example, says Boe Pahari.

Towards 2060, plastic waste is projected to grow three-fold reaching 1 billion tonnes per annum. We see a number of disrupting forces driving this growth, such as population growth with two billion people that will join the planet by 2050 4 and demographic changes with increasing affluence projected to drive plastic waste per capita to grow from 126kg in 2019 to 238kg in 2060. Further, we see growing recycling rates underpinned by decarbonisation initiatives and urbanisation with 68% of the population living in urban areas by 2050. At VisionEdgeOne, we see significant opportunities to invest in essential services such as waste collection and treatment that benefit from an attractive combination of infra thematics and exposure to the global forces of disruption. As new technologies and solutions emerge and are being adapted into society, we see many additional attractive opportunities to contribute to more sustainable solutions through investments into new niches such as re-cycling or up-cycling, which will be essential services and solutions for a successful transition to a fully circular economy of the whole plastics ecosystem.

1 OECD Global Plastic Outlook 2 European Parliament (2018) 3 EU Plastic Strategy, European Commission 4 United Nations