Report: Plastic is on track to become a bigger climate problem than coal
By Joseph Winters | October 22, 2021 | Grist
Plastic permeates the oceans, clutters landfills, and threatens to create a “near-permanent contamination of the natural environment,” according to researchers. As if that weren’t bad enough, it is also a major contributor to climate change.
A new report from the advocacy group Beyond Plastics says that emissions from the plastic industry could overtake those from coal-fired power plants by the end of this decade. At every step of its life cycle, the report said, plastic causes greenhouse gas emissions that are jeopardizing urgent climate goals and harming marginalized communities.
“Plastic is intimately connected to the climate crisis,” said Judith Enck, a former Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator and the founder of Beyond Plastics, at a press conference unveiling the report. Most people understand how plastic strangles the ocean and can cause health problems, she added, but far fewer have grasped its concerning climate footprint. “Plastic is the new coal,” Enck said.
The report details 10 ways that plastic contributes to global warming, starting with its creation. Plastics are petroleum products, meaning they are made from materials produced by oil and gas wells. Most shale wells in the U.S. are fracked, a process by which liquid is injected deep into the ground to force out methane, ethane, and other gases. Beyond Plastics estimates that leakage at these fracking wellheads contributes an estimated 33 million metric tons of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere annually — an amount that’s roughly equivalent to Denmark’s total emissions in 2019.
Even more greenhouse gas is leaked from pipelines that transport fracked gas to processing facilities. And the facilities themselves — ethane “cracker” plants that heat fracked gas to very high temperatures so it can be turned into plastic — are also “super emitters of greenhouse gases,” Enck said at the press conference for the new report. The U.S.’s 35 cracker facilities and the power plants that help them run release 63.5 million metric tons of greenhouse gases per year — just shy of Greece’s total 2019 output. The petrochemical industry’s plans for expansion could add an additional 38 million metric tons of ghg emissions annually by 2025.
Plastic production doesn’t just help warm the planet; the greenhouse gas emissions are typically accompanied by a slurry of potentially harmful chemicals that can make their way into the surrounding air, water, and soil. The resulting health issues affect nearby neighborhoods, which tend to be disproportionately nonwhite and lower-income. “There are some communities that have facility after facility piled up on them,” said Alex Bomstein, a senior litigation attorney with the Pennsylvania-based nonprofit Clean Air Council.