Plastic Is the New Coal
By Ed Cara | October 21, 2021 | Gizmodo
A new report out on Thursday warns that plastics will overtake coal-fired power plants as a major leading source of greenhouse emissions in the U.S. in less than a decade. The continued rise of plastic production threatens to wipe away the modest progress made against climate change that’s come from reducing our dependence on coal in recent years, the authors say. And like so many things, the consequences of this unfettered growth are likely to impact people of color and those living with poverty more than others.
The report is the work of Beyond Plastics, a project affiliated with Bennington College in Vermont that’s focused on ending plastic pollution. But it builds upon other recent attempts to quantify the environmental costs of plastic, which is largely produced through the distillation of crude oil, including the Environmental Integrity Project. It was also authored by scientists from Material Research, a research firm focused on “research and project development that advances environmentally sound, healthy, and equitable solutions to complex issues.”
According to the authors, the total emissions footprint of the plastics industry in the U.S. in 2020—which includes production, usage, and disposal—is now estimated to be the equivalent of least 232 million tons of carbon dioxide, or the average emissions from 116 standard coal plants (carbon dioxide equivalent, or CO2e, is used as a common unit to gauge the impact of different greenhouse gases, with carbon dioxide as a measuring stick). By 2030, they estimate that this footprint will eclipse the total output of coal in the U.S.
“This report documents the plastic sector’s staggering contribution to greenhouse gas emissions in the United States, which is now poised to surpass those of coal-fired power plants: Plastics is the new coal,” Judith Enck, a former Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator during the Obama administration and the president of Beyond Plastics, wrote in the foreword to the report.
“From fracking, to cracking to incineration—plastics release massive amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,” Enck said in an email. “Plastics must be on the climate change agenda just like power generation and transportation are.”