Opinion: Plastics – Another Front In The Campaign To Save Our Climate And Health

A high school senior, Noah Kassis, is the Chair of the Youth Commission in a small city not far from where I live in Massachusetts. The Youth Commission recently led a successful campaign to enact a city ordinance to ban plastic shopping bags from all retail establishments and ban plastic takeout containers and plasticware from restaurants. I asked him why this was so important to him and the Youth Commission.

Noah said, “As a young person, the climate crisis is one of the most daunting and scary things we face. Banning plastics was a manageable and ambitious, yet achievable, way for me to get my hands on the problem in my local community.” His work spurred me to investigate the issue and here is some of what I’ve learned.

Globally, we produce about 310 million tons of plastic each year, about half of which are single use items such as shopping bags, plates, cups, straws, and packaging. Total production is expected to rise to somewhere between 750 million tons to a billion tons per year by 2050, unless big changes occur.

Plastics, Fossil Fuels, And Climate Change
Plastic is made from fossil fuels. Greenhouse gasses are emitted at every stage of its lifecycle. The emissions begin with methane emitted in the extraction of fracked oil and gas and continue with methane leaks during transport. A recent report from the Center for International Environmental Law estimated that 12.5 to 13.5 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent are emitted per year while extracting and transporting natural gas for manufacturing plastics in the United States.

The refining process is worse. Every year the equivalent of the emissions of 45 million passenger vehicles is emitted in the refining process for manufacturing ethylene, a building block for many plastics. This refining is a dirty process — emitting hundreds of dangerous toxins and most often occurring near communities of poor people and people of color — an all too typical form of environmental racism. “Cancer Alley” in Louisiana, which has been in the news recently, is a classic example.

Disposal
Then there is disposal. Only 8.5% of plastics in the U.S. were recycled even before China closed its doors to our plastic waste in 2018. Much of the waste is incinerated, with emissions of 6 million metric tons of CO₂ equivalent in 2015, projected to grow to 49 million metric tons in 2030 and 91 million metric tons by 2015. Like the refining process, it is a major source of toxic emissions with disastrous health effects on nearby communities — again most often poor people and plic eople of color. If these facilities needed to be located in middle and upper class white communities, they would never be built.

Plastic Pollution
Plastic pollution is everywhere — in staggering quantities. 15 million metric tons of plastic waste enter our oceans every year. Plastic micro particles are found in everything from drinking water to beer to table salt and even in human placentas. According to Judith Enck of Beyond Plastics, “we’re all ingesting roughly a credit card’s worth of plastic each week.” We know that plastics contain a plethora of toxic chemicals that can interfere with endocrine systems, fertility and more, but we don’t yet know the full measure of how dangerous they are to our health.

This may already be more bad news than you or I can stand. Perhaps it helps to know that effective action is being mobilized and there are ways we can make a difference. Please see the excellent website I recommend in the last paragraph of this post.

Fossil Fuel Companies
Fossil fuel companies have done unspeakable damage to our climate and are now facing the rising worldwide movement to convert to renewable energy — mostly wind and solar.  They are facing major downturns, and hopefully elimination, of the use of gas and oil for energy, heating and cooling, transportation, etc. Their new plan is to keep their businesses profitable through expanding the manufacture and use of plastics and petrochemicals. In other words, they want to continue to profit while emitting greenhouse gases without regard for the disastrous effects on the climate and on public health.

Judith Enck reports, “The industry is planning a massive buildout, with hundreds of new ethane-cracker facilities that turn fossil fuels into the plastic pellets that can be made into many products proposed in Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Louisiana, and Texas. “

Once again, we are not just fighting to shift people’s habits of consumption and find alternatives, but also fighting against powerful corporations intent on reaping private profits while the public pays the cost of the accompanying damage to the climate, ecosystems, and public health.

What Can We Do?
Personally we can all make sure we take our reusable cloth shopping bags when we go to the grocery and avoid purchasing plastic packaging or products when there’s an alternative. These individual choices do make a difference. They help keep the issue in our minds and can connect us with our caring for the earth and all living things. In general, recycling is a good idea, but with plastics it can’t begin to solve the problem. There’s simply too much plastic, especially single-use plastic, being produced and consumed. The market for recycled plastic is quite small. We must reduce the use of plastic.

We need collective solutions, and that requires government action. The best action guide I’ve found is at Beyond Plastics. They’ve identified 13 priorities to include immediately in stimulus bills at the federal level, 5 false solutions to avoid, and 8 executive actions the President could take now. They make writing to the President and members of Congress easy.

They strongly recommend local actions and have developed sample bills and resource guides for enacting bans at the city, county, and state levels. Their site is full of information, from successful campaigns to information about alternatives to plastics. They also invite you to sign up for periodic emails to keep you up to date on the issues. If you’d rather donate money than write letters or start a campaign, I think their work is well worth supporting.

Russ Vernon-Jones was the Principal of Fort River Elementary School from 1990-2008.  He is a co-facilitator of the Coming Together Anti-Racism Project in the Amherst area.  He chairs the Racism, White Supremacy, and Climate Justice working group of Climate Action Now of Western Mass, and blogs regularly on climate justice at www.RussVernonJones.org.