Missing the mark: Why you should be wary of pro-plastic claims

Is your cotton tote really worse than your plastic bag?

Claims promoting plastic as a “climate-friendly” material have managed to inundate the social media landscape lately, perpetuating a fundamental misunderstanding of the link between plastic, fossil fuels, and climate change.

Plastic and climate change are not mutually exclusive; they are inherently interconnected. Claims that plastic is less carbon-intensive than alternatives are misleading and can have deep consequences for how we regulate plastic and design new products. More than just distracting, the industry denies its culpability by deliberately hiding the direct link between plastic and climate change.

Plastic contributes directly to the climate crisis

In the year 2019 alone, 850 million metric tons of greenhouse gases will be added to the atmosphere from the production and incineration of plastic. This is equal to the emissions from 189 brand-new coal plants. We know coal is dirty, but why can’t we see that about plastic?

By 2050, the accumulation of greenhouse gas emissions from plastic could reach 10-13 percent of the entire remaining carbon budget, or the amount of global carbon emissions permissible while still keeping temperature rise under 1.5°C.

Plastic almost always begins as a fossil fuel, with high levels of emissions at each stage of the production process. Many of these stages and sources are not obvious at first thought.

  • Extraction and transport risk major leakages from pipelines and high emissions from the trucks billed with moving the products from site to site.
  • The industry seeks to expand refining and manufacturing, which is the most emissions-heavy stage. To put the sheer amount of emissions in perspective, in 2015 just 24 ethylene facilities in the US produced as much carbon dioxide as 3.8 million passenger vehicles.
  • After we throw it out, plastic produces more greenhouse gas emissions, regardless of whether the plastic is landfilled, recycled, or incinerated. Incineration is the most harmful choice, with the highest emissions rates of all options.
  • Plastic that ends up in the environment starts a hidden lifetime of emissions. If it ends up in the oceans, studies show it likely increases the methane and other greenhouse gas emissions coming from the ocean’s surface. Microplastics also interfere in the ocean’s life-supporting ability to capture and sequester carbon dioxide.

So if plastic and fossil fuels are fundamentally linked, how can plastic be “climate-friendly”?

Well, it’s not.

The plastic industry is often behind pro-plastic statements, as they have a direct financial interest in ensuring that plastic production continues to increase. Lobbying groups and the industry itself frequently sponsor pro-plastic reports, so the big claims that plastic is better than its alternatives aren’t surprising.

So what should we watch out for when reading dramatic headlines about plastic and its alternatives?

Pro-plastic studies reach the conclusions they were designed to reach

A study from the American Chemistry Council claims that using plastic packaging reduces energy use and greenhouse gas emissions more than its alternatives. The problem here is that it’s strictly a packaging analysis: they consider no changes whatsoever to how a product is designed, packaged, or distributed. They only test other single-use alternatives.

Pro-plastic studies often talk about what the impacts are if you keep a product exactly the same — same form, single-use — instead of envisioning ways we can use more sustainable materials in new forms altogether.

But as a society, we have to move past that mindset. We need more innovative thinking about how we design, package, and distribute our products — in ways that are durable and long-lasting, instead of single-use. Rather than having a plastic bottle for lotion that you throw away once it’s empty, we want bottles made of reusable materials. Better yet, we want products reimagined altogether so that single-use packaging isn’t needed. We could make bars of lotion the rule rather than the exception. All it takes is creative thinking and a willingness to try new conceptions of the same product.

But what about the plastic that makes my car lighter?

Interest groups often focus on the utility of plastic in making other technologies greener, like using plastic in cars to make them lighter so as to curb emissions. Others point to more essential uses of plastic, like in vital medical devices.

Bringing up these arguments in the plastic debate misses the point that the primary critique here is of non-essential, single-use plastic. Nearly 40% of all plastic produced is discarded after one use. Think food wrap or the containers your take-out dinner comes in. These types of single-use, disposable plastic make up most of our plastic waste and are completely unnecessary, meaning it’s the perfect place to start to reduce our plastic production and consumption.

Recycling won’t save us all, and neither will other false solutions

Be wary of false solutions to the plastic problem. While the industry narrative says that plastic is sustainable since it can be recycled, this misleads us into thinking recycling is a clean and viable solution.

Recycling is important, but it’s unfortunately not enough to dig us out of our plastic problem. Only a very small amount of plastic has actually been recycled: around nine percent. Recycling is costly and not economically viable for most municipalities, even in developed nations. As a result, manufacturing new plastic is often cheaper than recycling old material. Currently, wealthy countries send their plastic waste overseas to countries that don’t have the proper capacity for managing that waste. That is set to end, as countries agreed in May to stop exporting most mixed and contaminated plastic waste without the prior informed consent of the receiving nation. If the waste can’t be sent overseas, communities will have to turn to unsustainable options like landfills or, worse, incineration.

Do you remember your three R’s — reduce, reuse, recycle? We seem to place undue emphasis on the “recycle” part of that equation, but it’s actually a hierarchy: The most effective way to deal with our plastic waste is to reduce our consumption of it in the first place. Recycling isn’t the be-all and end-all of dealing with plastic waste, but it was never meant to be.

So what’s the real solution to the plastic crisis?

As a global community, we need to immediately reduce the production and consumption of plastic.

Otherwise, our plastic problem will only get worse: The plastic industry is poised to massively expand plastic production in the coming years. Since 2010, 334 projects cumulatively valued at $204 billion in capital investment have been announced and/or begun. If we do not curb expansion, it will be nearly impossible to keep the global rise in temperature under 1.5°C.

To facilitate the transition away from plastic, we need to support single-use bans at the local level and encourage zero-waste communities. Further, we need to call for bans on incineration and open burning in our communities.

Keeping a healthy skepticism about plastic and plastic studies will benefit us all by leading us to more creative solutions and a more robust public discussion on how to confront the plastic crisis. We need all hands on deck to fix this problem because only together can we break free from plastic.

Photo of Gillian Diebold, Communications Intern

By Gillian Diebold, Communications Intern

Originally posted on September 6, 2019