Buildings’ Hidden Plastic Problem
November 2024 | Habitable
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Brief Highlights
In this brief, we present highlights from the significant body of science indicating that plastic building materials are contributing to serious health and environmental harms over their life cycle, from fossil fuel extraction to production, use, and disposal. These impacts fall disproportionately on susceptible and marginalized people, including women, children, Indigenous people, low-income communities, and people of color. We share examples of solutions and offer recommendations to strengthen policies that will reduce plastic use in the built environment and associated life cycle harms.
Policy Recommendations
• Include building materials in the scope of plastics, chemical, and other relevant policies.
• Target phase-out of unnecessary plastic building materials in favor of safer alternatives, prioritizing the most hazardous plastic polymers, such as PVC and polystyrene.
• Ban classes of chemicals of concern from building materials and require safer alternatives. Alternatives include non-plastic materials that do not require these additives.
• Use accurate service life assumptions for building materials in cost-benefit analysis.
• Require full transparency and public disclosure of chemicals and additives used in the production of building materials. Mandate labeling where needed to ensure that hazardous polymers can be easily avoided and toxic chemicals do not enter recycling and other circular material streams.
• Invest in research and development and pass policies to support infrastructure needed for circular systems of building materials management.
