Climate, Health: Plastic Is Just As Destructive To The Climate, As Oil And Gas
"Plastic Is Just as Destructive to the Climate as Oil and Gas," Sonali Kolhatkar, Truthdig, May 30, 2019. EXCERPTS:
The phenomenon of climate change invokes images of black smoke billowing out of smokestacks, emissions from exhaust pipes on an endless highway of bumper-to-bumper traffic, or the insect-like cranes of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and drilling operations dotting the landscape. We do not view our plastic shopping bags as part of the climate crisis — but we should. And just as the thirst for fossil fuel energy is an ugly symptom of runaway capitalism, so is plastic production and use. Both arise from the same problematic system, and both contribute to the same existential crisis humanity faces.
Plastic pervades every aspect of our modern lives. From the keys that I tap on my laptop as I write this piece to the lid on my coffee shop latté, the packaging of the individually wrapped cookies on the countertop, and even the lenses on my sunglasses. While we may worry about the pollution that plastic — especially the disposable variety — creates in clogging our landfills, choking our marine life, entering our food chain and disrupting our endocrine systems, we are likely not considering the role of plastic production and disposal on climate change. There is indeed a direct link between the devastating tornadoes in the Midwest this week and the 128 billion plastic bottles that Coca-Cola churns out every year.
- Plastic pollution on a beach in San Juan, Puerto Rico, April 3, 2019.
Manufacturers churn out 448 million tons of plastic a year, a large part of which is disposable, intended for packaging products. Perhaps we imagine the containers holding our fresh organic berries or the sturdy bubble-wrapped packages our Amazon orders are delivered in are easily transformed into new packaging once we toss them into our recycling bins.
But only about 10% of all plastic waste in the U.S. is ever recycled, and now that percentage has likely dropped even more. Malaysia announced this week it will be sending back hundreds of tons of plastic waste to their countries of origin — including the U.S., UK and Australia. Malaysia’s move comes a year after China decided to stop accepting plastic waste for recycling and is the latest in a disturbing trend of a world filling up with unwanted plastic at the same time that manufacturers are ramping up production.
Carroll Muffett, president and CEO of the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), explained to me in an interview that “plastics are simply fossil fuels in another form. Ninety-nine percent of what goes into plastics are oil, gas and, to a lesser extent, coal feed stocks.” As a result, “the processes that produce plastics begin at wellheads and at frac pads across the United States and around the world.”
According to Muffett, every step in the production of the plastic we casually use and toss away has an impact on the climate, from the emissions released during extractive processes like fracking to the transporting of the raw materials to plants and beyond. Because ever fewer plastics are getting recycled, many places across the globe are also burning their plastic trash as fuel, adding more emissions into our already saturated atmosphere. And the plastic that is not recycled or incinerated itself emits potent greenhouse gases like methane and ethylene, as a 2018 study has alarmingly shown.
CIEL recently published a report called Plastic & Climate: The Hidden Costs of a Plastic Planet, which found, among other things, that “the production and incineration of plastic will produce more than 850 million metric tons of greenhouse gases — equal to the emissions from 189 500-megawatt coal power plants.” In spite of these alarming statistics, Muffett says that “the infrastructure for making new plastics is growing incredibly rapidly.”...
Read More, https://www.truthdig.com/articles/plastic-is-just-as-destructive-to-the-climate-as-oil-and-gas/
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