A Plastic World
- Abigail Knowles
- Apr 5, 2021
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 13, 2021
Look around you right now. I bet you can identify at least 10 items with plastic components within 20 feet of yourself. For example I have a plastic Coke Zero bottle, 3 remote controls, a plastic phone case, a plastic cup, and much more. It took little to no effort for me to identify plastic products in my near vicinity. And I didn't even walk into my bathroom or kitchen (and trust me, the plastic abundance there would be much worse).
We live in a plastic world. No, we are not Barbies, but our world is almost comparably plastic to hers. What we don't realize is just how great an effect this plastic world is having, and will have, on Earth's climate. My first thought when thinking of the problem with plastics is the problem of plastic pollution. We see images of vast clumps of garbage in the ocean and this encourages us to recycle and dispose properly. But how often are we reminded of the environmental impacts of plastic well before it even reaches that point??
The life cycle of all sorts of plastic are detrimental to the environment from their origins up until their very end. To understand just how great an impact plastics are having, it's important to start from the beginning and work from there.
Origin Story
All origin stories inherently come with tragedy. From an environmental perspective, plastics have a very tragic origin. Plastics are synthesized from oil, natural gas, or coal, the very same culprits of our changing climate. We blame cars and airplanes for our fossil fuel usage, yet we often fail to remember that plastics are made from those very same fossil fuels.
Manufacturing
This synthesis process requires energy. Molding, shaping, and coloring all require energy. And where do most plants get this energy from? Ding, ding, ding...more fossil fuels baby!
Transportation
Once these plastics products are created, they have to be transported all over the world to reach their consumers. They are transported by boat, plane, and truck across the globe, creating even more demand and need for fossil fuels.
Disposal
We're so glad the supermarket had our very favorite version of Mountain Dew in the checkout fridge. We are so excited that we drink it all on the way home! That lovely bottle now has 3 major paths of disposal:
Litter - It will enter ecosystems and cause all sorts of harm. In both aquatic and land ecosystems, it will break down into microplastics which accumulate in food chains and damage important cellular functions. It will also accumulate in the giant garbage vortexes that we see in pictures, which hurts aquatic ecosystems and leads to the death of many aquatic organisms.
Landfill - Plastic can take over 1000 years to decompose in a landfill. While sitting in the landfill it will release toxins, which then are leached out and effect water quality.
Recycle - Here it will be taken to a recycling plant where it will be compressed into a block, melted, mixed, and synthesized into new products. This will once again require energy inputs and often the recycled products cannot be recycled efficiently a second time.
To break this all down for you very simply, plastics harm the environment in some form every step of the way. In 2019, the Center for International Environmental Law reported these important statistics about the life cycle of plastic:
108 million metric tons of CO2 equivalents were released per year as a result of global fossil fuel extraction and refining for plastic production.
Plastic refining is the fastest growing industry in the manufacturing industry.
In 2015, 184.3-213 million metric tons of CO2 equivalents were released globally due to plastic manufacturing(for reference that is the same as 45 million passenger vehicles being driven for one year).
The incineration of just plastic packaging, totaled 16 million metric tons of CO2 equivalents in 2015 alone.
If plastic production and disposal remains the same, by 2030, their global emissions could rise to 1.34 gigatons per year, an impact as large as 295 five-hundred-megawatt coal plants.
I personally am blown away by those statistics. I knew that my plastic consumption was harmful, especially if I didn't recycle, but I didn't understand just how harmful society's high demand for plastics is. If we want a sustainable and healthy world, it cannot be one made of plastic.
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