These are the good times: Reflecting on 2017
Head of content at MPN, Lu Rahman reflects on 2017, discussing the gender pay gap and where medical plastics fit into the world's plastic waste problem.
It’s always enjoyable thinking about what to write each issue. And at this time of year there’s the tendency to reflect on the last twelve months and how events have played globally as well as the effects they may have had on the medical plastics device industry.
It’s good to end on a positive note so learning that UK manufacturing had hit a four-year high in November last year was welcome news
It’s been an interesting year with certain topics coming up for discussion time and again. Unfortunately, the gender pay gap appeared in the headlines too many times. Sadly, many businesses haven’t addressed salary discrepancies and we are still hearing reports about unbalanced male and female salaries across all manner of industries. I’m hoping that 2018 might be the year we see a concerted shift and a commitment from businesses to stamp out wage discrepancies. Last year Economia ran the headline ‘Number of women in FTSE 350 board pipeline stagnates’, and found that there had been ‘no progress over the last year in the number of women on executive committees which are the pipeline of talent to the board’. A positive initiative to remedy this has to happen soon across all businesses and industries.
Another stand-out topic in 2017 was waste, namely plastic waste. Media images of oceans filled with goods we no longer wanted and had discarded were commonplace and of course it has made us question how we consume and dispose of plastic items. I’ve written much in this in recent months and it’s tricky. Medical plastics are unlike other plastics. We can ban plastic straws, we can see the sense in reducing plastic packaging in the supermarket, but we can see few alternatives to single-use plastic medical devices. And where packaging is concerned, the need for devices and/or drugs to withstand travel, temperatures, and tampering for example, overrides issues of sustainability. That said, it isn’t entirely impossible for the plastics industry to look at the way it produces and disposes of waste. Initiatives are taking place to address healthcare plastic waste with groups such as the Healthcare Plastics Recycling Council taking the lead on this important subject.
It’s good to end on a positive note so learning that UK manufacturing had hit a four-year high in November last year was welcome news indeed. The Guardian reported: “Britain’s factories are enjoying the best business conditions for more than four years as strong demand at home and abroad boosts order books, production and jobs”, following reports that the purchasing managers index (PMI) rose from 56.5 in October to 58.2 in November – apparently the 10th best position in the survey in 26 years.
And it hasn’t just been in the UK that manufacturing has been experiencing favourable growth with stronger reports coming from the Eurozone where manufacturing has achieved its best performance since the single currency began.
Armed with this market buoyancy let’s hope we can enter 2018 on a high and keep it there. There are exciting times ahead and many opportunities to grab.