<
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/18/plastic-production-emission-climate-crisis>
"By the middle of the century, global emissions from plastic production could
triple to account for one-fifth of the Earth’s remaining carbon budget, an
analysis has found.
The stunning new estimates from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,
published on Wednesday, provide yet more evidence that the plastic industry is
“undermining the world’s efforts to address climate change”, said Heather
McTeer Toney, executive director of the Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Beyond
Petrochemicals campaign, which helped fund the new report.
The production of plastic, which is made from fossil fuels, is greenhouse
gas-intensive. Coal, oil or gas must first be mined or extracted, and then
those materials must be refined and processed in another emissions-heavy
procedure. In some cases, other chemical compounds such as formaldehyde must
also be produced, creating more pollution.
Petrochemicals are then “cracked” into plastic building blocks such as ethylene
– the aspect of plastic production with the largest emissions toll. Additional
emissions come from the process of polymerization – combining those building
blocks to form larger molecules – and then shaping them into products, the
report says.
To estimate the total emissions associated with plastic production, the authors
examined the greenhouse gas impact of nine of the most common types of
plastics, which are used to create plastic packaging, water bottles, hot
beverage containers and other materials.
Plastic creation generated 2.24 gigatonnes of planet-heating pollution in 2019,
or as much as 600 coal-fired power plants. That year, it accounted for 5% of
all global carbon emissions, 12% of the world’s oil demand and 8.5% of gas
demand, the report found.
Those numbers are expected to increase dramatically, the report says, because
the plastic industry is on an exponential growth trajectory, with production
expected to double or even triple by 2050."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
