MEXICO CITY (Sept. 7, 1 p.m. ET) — A leading recycling proponent has exhorted Mexico’s plastics industry to be vigilant as 1,000 new federal and state legislators start work across the country in the wake of July’s national elections.

It’s unlikely, Eduardo de la Tijera Coeto argues, that every single new legislator and government official will ignore plastics issues altogether.

A year ago De la Tijera, a consultant and former president of plastics industry association Anipac, applauded the introduction of pro-recycling legislation, which he himself helped to draft, in Mexico City.

But in a letter dated Aug. 27 and emailed to plastics industrialists, he warns that “with the arrival of 1,000 and something new federal and state legislators, several thousand new municipal mayors and a handful of new environment ministers, these two positions, degradation and recycling, will probably become an issue once again.”

He believes it would be wrong for the industry to “wait and see what happens. … That would be akin to standing against the wall before a firing squad and asking to be shot.”

He urges plastics processors to follow the example of the national plastics bag industry, which took the initiative and convinced legislators that sustainable production and consumption is possible.

“They managed to shake off the ghost of obligatory degradation,” a victory, writes De la Tijera, “that has been widely acknowledged, both within and outside the country…

“Let’s act first by formulating the criteria and practices that correspond to every one of our products. Let’s adopt those criteria and practices, not only in our operations but in the promotion of our products so that consumers also cooperate.”