Report: Plastic May Soon Overtake Coal as a Climate Killer
By Jeff Goodell | October 21, 2021 | Rolling Stone
Everyone clued-in enough to understand the urgency of the climate crisis probably knows that the ocean has become a dumping zone for plastic and that single-use plastic bottles and bags are choking the planet.
But as far as I can tell, they rarely talk about it. Plastic people and climate people have largely been in separate worlds and on separate missions. Climate people talk about the problems with carbon offsets and the impact of high natural gas prices on coal consumption. Plastic people talk about the myth of recycling and what happens to sea turtles when they eat plastic bags. But they rarely talk to each other.
A new report from Beyond Plastics, an initiative at Bennington College to reduce plastic pollution, may change that. “We see the world going to the COP [UN climate conference] in Glasgow, and we see Congress debating climate policy,” says Judith Enck, a former EPA regional administrator who is now president of Beyond Plastics. “Our goal with this report is to get plastics into that discussion – where it belongs.”
It may work. The report is the first to look at the full climate impacts of plastic, analyzing publicly available data of 10 stages of plastics production, usage, and disposal. The results are startling. Among the findings:
The U.S. plastics industry releases at least 232 million tons of greenhouse gases each year, the equivalent of 116 average-sized coal-fired power plants.
In 2020, the plastics industry’s reported emissions increased by 10 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions over 2019. Construction is currently underway in the U.S. on another 12 plastics facilities, and 15 more are planned. Altogether these expansions may emit more than 40 million more tons of greenhouse gases annually by 2025.
Plastics are on track to contribute more climate change emissions than coal plants by 2030.
Plastics are brewed with fossil fuels. The most sought-after feedstock is natural gas, the molecules of which are split apart in huge plants called “crackers” and reassembled to make everything from the keyboard I’m typing on to the 100-foot-high mountain of plastic bottles I once saw on the beach in Lagos, Nigeria. Oil and gas companies like ExxonMobil have a huge presence in the plastics business — and it’s getting bigger.
In Enck’s view, expanding into plastics is the plan B for a fossil fuel industry that sees its future being squeezed by a shift to cleaner, cheaper forms of energy and an increasingly broad social mandate to reduce carbon pollution. “They are losing money on power, on electrification, on the rise of electric cars,” says Enck. “So under the radar, they are investing billions in a petrochemical build-out that few people know about, except impacted communities.”
As the report underscores, the health impacts of emissions from the plastics industry hit hardest in low income neighborhoods and among people of color — 90 percent of reported climate pollution is in 18 communities, mostly along the coast of Louisiana and Texas. People living within three miles of these petrochemical clusters earn 28 percent less than the average American household and are 67 percent more likely to be people of color.
Beyond climate, the fight for clean air and water in these communities is a David vs. Goliath battle. In Corpus Christi, Rolling Stone reported how residents are trying to stop a new Exxon plastics plant by cutting off its water supply. To get a sense of how people in these communities feel about living in a petrochemical abyss, take a few minutes to watch this video of Yvette Arellano, the founder of Fenceline Watch, an environmental justice group fighting toxic pollution in Texas.