First of all, lignin is extracted or precipitated from black liquor. To understand how much lignin can be obtained, one only has to look at the corresponding volume of black liquor. I don't think that all pulp and paper companies will be converting their black liquor into lignin, because they use the former for other things nowadays, but the volume of the latter can be very significant. Many companies such as Domtar and West Fraser already have semi-commercial lignin demonstration and production plants.
I can't tell you how much lignin is currently produced, but I can share statistics on the volumes of plastics. In 2013, 233 million tonnes of plastics were produced; in 2020, it is projected to reach 330 million tonnes.
We could consider the possibility of replacing a small portion of these plastics with lignin in very specific applications when possible. Either way, I think that there will never be enough lignin for it to be used in a wide variety of applications, at least not in the years to come. This is the way we should approach this. We have to work on the right products with the right applications. We have to identify where it is possible to replace some of these plastics with lignin. I specifically mentioned polyurethane foam, but lignin can also in part replace PVC. PVC is one of the most commonly used plastic polymers for construction, but it is not very environmentally friendly. We have achieved lots of progress with techniques to inject lignin into PVC while maintaining the performance of PVC products.