The Plastic Industry: A Positive Force Driving Development and Empowering Daily Life
As a crucial pillar of the global manufacturing industry, plastic products such as plastic bags, Garbage Bags, and disposable PE gloves are not only deeply integrated into daily life but also play an irreplaceable positive role in economic development, people's livelihood security, technological breakthroughs, and other fields. This article will analyze the positive value of the plastic industry from multiple dimensions and demonstrate its driving force for social progress.
1. Economic Engine: Boosting Growth and Creating Employment
The plastic industry is an important driving force for economic growth, injecting sustained vitality into the global and regional economies. Taking the Chinese market as an example, in the garbage bag segment alone, the market size grew from 7.83 billion yuan in 2016 to over 15 billion yuan in 2023, with a stable annual compound growth rate of more than 8%, making it a key growth point in the consumer goods manufacturing industry. The industry has a well-developed industrial chain, covering multiple links from upstream plastic raw material production, mid-stream product processing and manufacturing, to downstream wholesale, retail, and logistics and transportation. It directly or indirectly creates millions of jobs. Especially in industrial agglomeration areas such as the Yangtze River Delta and the Pearl River Delta, plastic enterprises have become an important support for local employment security. At the same time, relying on cost advantages and wide applicability, the export scale of plastic products has expanded year by year, contributing to the growth of foreign trade economy. In 2023, the export value of China's plastic products exceeded 60 billion US dollars, making China an important global supply base for plastic products.
2. Livelihood Security: Facilitating Daily Life and Protecting Special Scenarios
With their convenience and practicality, plastic products have become a key carrier for improving the quality of people's livelihoods. In daily life, plastic bags provide a lightweight packaging solution for retail shopping, effectively reducing product transportation losses; household garbage bags facilitate the implementation of waste classification and improve the sanitation of residential environments. In 2023, the usage rate of garbage bags in Chinese households reached 92%, significantly enhancing the convenience of life. In special scenarios, disposable PE gloves play an even more important role. Sterile PE gloves in the medical field provide safety protection for medical staff and reduce the risk of cross-infection; PE gloves in the food processing industry ensure food hygiene. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the demand for disposable PE gloves surged threefold, making them an important material for epidemic prevention and livelihood security.
3. Technological Breakthroughs: Performance Upgrading and Functional Innovation
Continuous technological innovation in the plastic industry constantly promotes the upgrading of product performance and the expansion of functions to meet diverse market demands. In terms of product performance, through the optimization of material formulas, the flexibility and wear resistance of disposable PE gloves have been significantly improved, with wearing comfort increased by 40% compared with traditional products. They also have anti-static and anti-slip properties, suitable for professional scenarios such as electronic manufacturing and precision instrument operation. Garbage bags adopt high-strength polyethylene materials, with load-bearing capacity increased from the traditional 5 kg to 15 kg, and they are not easy to break. Some products are also added with waterproof coatings to meet the needs of wet waste storage. In the field of functional innovation, intelligent sensor garbage bags have emerged, which realize automatic opening and closing through infrared sensor technology without manual contact, especially suitable for scenarios with high hygiene requirements such as medical care and catering. The technology of degradable plastic products has also made continuous breakthroughs, with the degradation cycle shortened from the initial 180 days to 90 days, and their mechanical properties are close to those of traditional plastics, providing technical support for the balance between environmental protection and practicality.
4. Environmental Transformation: Green Materials and Circular Utilization
In response to environmental protection needs, the plastic industry has actively promoted green transformation and achieved remarkable results in the research and development of degradable materials and the construction of circular utilization systems. In the field of degradable plastics, the output of biodegradable garbage bags in China increased by 65% year-on-year in 2023, with products covering multiple scenarios such as households, municipal administration, and medical care. The fully biodegradable materials developed by some enterprises can be completely degraded into carbon dioxide and water in the natural environment without residual pollution, and their costs have decreased by 30% compared with 2019, gradually gaining market competitiveness. In terms of circular utilization, the plastic recycling system has been continuously improved. In 2023, the recycling rate of plastic waste in China reached 35%, an increase of 12 percentage points compared with 2018. The recycled plastics can be used to produce recycled plastic pellets and manufacture products such as garbage bins and building materials, realizing the circular utilization of resources. At the same time, the industry actively promotes clean production technologies, reduces energy consumption and pollutant emissions in the production process by optimizing production processes. In 2023, the energy consumption per unit output value of large-scale plastic enterprises decreased by 5% year-on-year, promoting the industry to develop in a green and low-carbon direction.