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Consumption by Industry Sector.
There are a lot of industries that are dependent on plastic, some of them are more traditional businesses, like car manufacturing and construction, some are new and very innovative industries like the IT and telecom industry.
The most important consumers in the industry sector are:.
• Packaging: It is still the largest consumer of plastics. In 2000, 37.3% of plastics were used in the packaging industry. Currently, around half of the products in Western Europe are wrapped in plastic. Although in the last years there has been a trend towards decreasing the weight of plastics packaging ("less is more-), plastics stays one of the most important materials in that sector.
• Building and construction: In 2000 this sector accounted for 18.9% of total plastics consumption. Plastics are popular because of their strength, durability, resistance to corrosion, and low maintenance.
• Electrical and Electronic: This sector had the largest percentage increase in 2000, growing 5.2% and accounted in total for 7.3% of plastics consumption. Plastic provides benefits for this sector that other materials can not provide. For example the trend to make electronic items smaller and smaller is possible with plastics.
• Automotive. As a traditional plastics consumption industry, the automotive industry consumes 7.2% of plastics supplied. Especially light weighted plastics are used to balance high performance with reliability, safety, and minimum environmental impact.
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Testing and Certification.
One has to know that biodegradable plastics can only be sold after having gone through a testing and certification procedure. Such a method will ensure the "complete biodegradability for example at a certain wall thickness- and the compost ability. Therefore, there exist some testing institutes such as the Biodegradable Products Institute in the U.S. or the IBAW in Germany.