It is imperative we switch to renewable energy as quickly as possible to save our planet. It is also extremely important to understand where all our emissions originate. We need to publish the fact that plastic is the new coal.

Your plastic water bottle will likely spend its golden years floating around the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but its life began thousands of feet underground. How it got from there to you—and why it was made in the first place—has big implications for global climate goals.

Climate change and plastic waste are two of the big environmental problems we have today. In almost all the literature I read on print and the internet, these two problems are independent of each other and addressed separately. It is only recently that I stumbled upon a study that links these two global environmental issues.

The annual climate conference needs world leaders to commit to tangible goals. Reducing plastic production is an urgent issue

Scientists recently figured out that expected surges in plastics manufacturing may cause enough greenhouse gas emissions to cancel out gains made through closures of most of the country’s coal-fired power plants.

Plastic pollution is one of the biggest environmental threats to this planet, and according to a report by the advocacy group Beyond Plastics, greenhouse gas emissions from plastic production in the United States are on track to outpace domestic coal emissions. Judith Enck, a former regional administrator of the EPA and founder of Beyond Plastics, co-authored the report and joins Living on Earth’s Bobby Bascomb to discuss.

Recent research entitled The new coal: plastics and climate change shows in detail the scale of emissions in each link of the plastic chain in the United States. The chain goes from the extraction of shale gas at one end to the incineration of discarded plastic at the other.

To date Rethink Research has not bothered itself with plastics, although expecting to have to address the complex industry sooner or later, but a report out this week, means it has to become a new focus.

Plastics will outpace coal plants in the U.S. by 2030 in terms of their contributions to climate change, according to a report released Oct. 21 by Beyond Plastics, a project at Bennington College in Vermont.

US plastics are on course to take over from coal in terms of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. According to a report from Bennington College’s Beyond Plastics project, the plastics industry in the US will be more polluting than the country’s coal industry by the end of the decade.

Plastics, military and hydro are three major sectors that environmental activists will be trying to push into the spotlight at the upcoming United Nations climate conference.

In what it calls a "comprehensive account," advocacy group Beyond Plastics has released a new document that details the repercussions of plastics manufacturing on the global climate crisis.

In what it calls a "comprehensive account," advocacy group Beyond Plastics has released a new document that details the repercussions of plastics manufacturing on the global clim”.

There have been many fronts in the fight against climate change, with the burning of fossil fuels like coal at the top of the list. But a new report says that plastics are right up there in the damage they cause to the climate and environment.

Plastics are on track to contribute more climate change emissions than coal plants by 2030, according to a new report by Beyond Plastics at Vermont’s Bennington College.