Plastics in transition

With its heavy reliance on fossil fuels, plastics manufacturing currently poses a serious threat to the environment. Plastic pollution is now a global problem too. This creates a dual challenge: how can we manage existing plastics waste and find alternatives to traditional plastics that are more re-usable and recyclable? The answer lies in innovation.

This EPO technology platform helps practitioners and policymakers to keep track of the ongoing transformation in plastics in real time. The platform is a go-to interface for accessing and understanding the huge volume of strategic patent information offered free of charge by the EPO. This resource contains some of the most up-to-date useful knowledge on polymers from the perspective of waste management and new materials.

Do you want to find out more about emerging polymer technologies? We offer a detailed mapping of environmentally friendly plastics innovation. With this platform you can:

• identify patents mapped to 70 relevant concepts of plastics waste management technologies and new alternative materials
• retrieve descriptive statistics for each plastics-related concept (e.g. patent counts per year, applicant, inventor, country and technology class)
• discover the Espacenet query used to identify patents within a given concept and tailor it to your specific needs (e.g. broaden or narrow the search)

These search queries were jointly developed by expert patent examiners and analysts from the European Patent Office (EPO) and 15 national patent offices (Austria, Croatia, Czechia, France, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Monaco, Netherlands, Slovakia, Slovenia, Türkiye and the United Kingdom) who have joined forces to support researchers and innovators.