The plastics industry is warming the Earth’s atmosphere TWICE as fast as the global aviation industry, the study claims
The aviation industry is notorious for dumping thousands of tons of greenhouse gases into the Earth’s atmosphere every year, but a new study shows that the plastics industry is far worse off.
Scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that the plastics industry emits the equivalent of 2.5 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year – compared to the aviation industry’s 1 billion tons.
Most news about plastic is about waste, which ends up in the oceans and even the human body, but plastic creates astonishing amounts of atmosphere-warming gases long before it is ever used, the scientists found.
Global plastic production – which runs on oil and uses petroleum byproducts to make the synthetic material – pollutes the atmosphere at as many as 600 coal-fired power plants – three times as many as exist in the entire US.
Plastic production, which uses petroleum products, is a major source of greenhouse gases generated in the US.
Plastic causes pollution at the beginning of its life, when the factories that make it produce greenhouse gases, and at the end of its life, when it pollutes nature and ends up in people’s bodies.
“Production of most plastic products is expected to increase exponentially, putting pressure on planetary boundaries from a triple crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution,” researchers wrote in the government-funded study.
‘The impact of plastics on the climate will only increase in the coming decades, as industry analysts expect production to at least double by 2050.’
If that happens, they predict that the resulting global warming will cost $38 trillion.
“Climate change will cause enormous economic damage within the next 25 years in almost all countries of the world, including highly developed countries such as Germany, France and the United States,” said lead author Leonie Wenz of the Potsdam Institute.
Yet most public and scientific attention to plastic focuses on what happens to plastic once it becomes waste.
However, this ignores a large part of the picture, according to the scientists behind it the report.
“The rapidly increasing production of plastics and continued dependence on fossil fuels for production have contributed to numerous environmental problems and health harms,” researchers wrote.
‘As a result, plastic pollution has become an increasing threat to natural ecosystems, human health and the climate.’
However, they added that there is not enough information available on how plastic production contributes to greenhouse gas emissions and the overall ‘carbon budget’ that must be met to keep global warming below the 2 global temperature increase .7 or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit.
The carbon budget is the amount of carbon that can be emitted and still stay below those numbers.
Their project was intended to fill those gaps.
It focused on the fossil fuels used in every step of the plastic production process, including the energy used for production and the petroleum products that make up the plastic itself.
The study examined the amount of greenhouse gas emissions from the nine different fossil fuel-based plastics that make up 80 percent of plastic production.
The sample included polyethylene (PE), which is used in plastic bags, polyvinyl chloride (PVC) found in pipes and a plastic used in car parts.
Nine types of plastic make up about 80 percent of the world’s plastic, but each type of plastic has different recycling and production requirements, making it difficult to make blanket recommendations.
Global plastic production emits more greenhouse gases than 600 coal-fired power plants – three times the number of coal-fired power plants in the entire US.
What they found was that the production of these nine plastics was responsible for about 2.24 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year (GtCO2e), a measure of the global warming potential of all the different greenhouse gases produced, including methane and nitrous oxide.
2.24 gigatons is approximately 2.5 billion tons.
These emissions represented 5.3 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, excluding land use change and forestry.
And even with modest growth in the plastics industry, these numbers would skyrocket in the coming years, the scientists discovered.
‘Under a conservative growth scenario’ of 2.5 percent per year, greenhouse gas emissions from plastic production would ‘more than double to 4.75 GtCO2e in 2050, accounting for 21-26% of the remaining global carbon budget to slow average temperature increase below 1.5°C. C SET FAHRENHEIT ( ), researchers wrote.
This research adds a crucial piece to the plastic picture that has been left out in much of the reporting on plastic waste.
And indeed, plastic waste causes great damage to the environment and human health.
Millions of tons of plastic are floating in the world’s oceans, scientists estimate.
And this waste breaks down into microscopic fragments called microplastics, which have been shown to accumulate in the brain, kidneys, liver and even the placenta, reducing fertility and increasing people’s risk for inflammation-related conditions such as inflammatory bowel disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s disease is increasing.
Air pollution is of particular concern because it is released so high into the atmosphere, but plastic production produces 2.5 times more CO2 equivalent emissions.
Coal-fired power stations are also notoriously dirty and bad for the climate, but produce only a fraction of the greenhouse gases that plastic production causes.
Microplastics are so ubiquitous that they have even been found in the clouds.
But the damage starts long before plastic products have a chance to become waste.
It starts at the beginning, when the plastic is made, and it comes in the form of planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, which the new study shows is significant.
The cost of all this pollution is paid not only by global warming, but also by the actual financial costs of dealing with a warming planet.
And a study published this week in the journal Nature showed just how high those costs are.
A team of German scientists discovered that continuing to use fossil fuels costs six times more than the world would need to switch to renewable energy.
These costs include not only the costs of efforts to remove carbon from the atmosphere, but also the impact of climate change on labor, agriculture and flood damage.
Of course, there are situations where plastic is necessary, especially in medicine: syringes, IV tubing, bandage packs – the list goes on.
The researchers behind the new study are not proposing a ban on all plastics, but are suggesting scaling back the industry.
Eliminating non-essential uses of plastics without alternatives, such as microbeads in cleaning products, could lead to a reduction in global (greenhouse gas) emissions from primary plastic production due to a reduction in production volume,” they wrote.
‘However, the (greenhouse gas) impact could be different if primary plastic production is reduced through the use of alternative materials or recycling.’