Waterway Plastics history

1976 - Plastics in its great variety of forms becomes the most used type of material in the world

1977 - Polyaryletheretherketone (PEEK) was first prepared by ICI

1979 - Introduction of first commercial mobile/ portable ‘phones

1980 - First Blue HDPE pressure pipes for potable water introduced into UK.

1983 - The slim plastic Swatch watch made of 51 mainly plastic components

The Society of the Plastics Industry, Inc., developed the plastic resin identification code in 1988, which detailed the seven types of plastics.

1991 - Dyson’s vacuum cleaner launched in Japan

1998 - Free standing Zanussi Oz fridge, with insulation and outer skins made in one process from polyurethane foam introduced

2001 - iPod dreamed up by Tony Fadell, an independent inventor, developed by Apple Computers

2003 - A sustainable European PVC recycling system, Recovinyl, was established

2005 - Polycond project established to look at the potential of conductive polymers

2009 - Boeing 787 (nicknames 'Boeing's Plastic Dream') comes into service, its skin is made up of 100% Plastic composites with plastic making up 50% of all materials in the plane.

2011 - VinylPlus, a new industry sustainability programme established

2013 - Recovinyl recycles more than one million PVC-U window frames per year in the UK

In 2017, the United States produced 35.4 million tons of plastic (32.1 million metric tons (MT)) but only recycled about 8.4% of it.