At South Korea's face mask packaging maker Gaone International, machines lay idle and halted in mid-production on the factory floor, as a shortage of plastic film due to the Middle East crisis has increased costs and forced a significant cut in production. 

"The most tangible change we're feeling is the rise in raw material prices and delays in supply, which have put us in a position where we can't manufacture our products," sales team manager Han Kyung-hun told Reuters last Wednesday (April 8), adding the company has slashed daily output to between 10% and 20% from the usual one million units as it hunts for new suppliers.

The 20-year-old factory is now telling its clients that they may need to wait up to 8 weeks for orders, versus two weeks previously, and expects revenue to suffer accordingly. 

The disruption to the supply for plastic needed to turn out single-use wrapping has, however, resulted in an unexpected benefit for Yonwoo, a South Korean maker of packaging for cosmetics, which touts its "eco-friendly" range of paper tubes and pouches as an alternative to plastic. While the war has sent prices of plastic soaring to roughly four-year highs by choking off flows of the required raw materials of oil and petrochemicals, Yonwoo's parent company Kolmar Korea says it has fuelled inquiries three-fold for paper-based options.

The supplier to major firms, such as France's L'Oreal, has fielded inquiries mainly for paper tubes encasing items such as sunscreen and lotions that use around 20% of the plastic employed by conventional packaging, Kim Min-sang, a senior manager at Kolmar Korea, said.

"With ongoing disruptions to plastic supply, we expect further growth in demand for our paper and other alternative materials," Kim said.

Across Asia, home to some of the world's biggest plastic users and polluters, changes that environmental groups have sought for decades may look like they are being adopted, even if they may prove a short-term flip.

Asia is not only heavily reliant on feedstock imported from the Middle East, but it is hooked on plastic, with China, Japan, South Korea and Southeast Asia together using almost a third of the world's total by 2022, OECD data showed, up 900% since 1990.

The region also accounts for more than a third of all plastic waste leaking into the environment, thanks to poor waste collection methods in low-income Southeast Asian nations. 

In South Korea, some residents and tourists are welcoming more eco-friendly packaging amid growing worries over plastic shortages.

"As more people around the world use plastic, I think (companies') initiatives to cut plastic and use more sustainable materials will benefit the environment,” 24-year-old university student, Lee Jin-won, said.

-Daewoung Kim, Dogyun Kim, Yunji Ha, Minwoo Park/Reuters