Msg: The Great Plastic Cr

The Great Plastic Crisis

Kokel, Nicolas

9/10/2022 12:00 AM

Summary

All synthetic plastics, fibres and rubbers add up to 420 million tons in 2017.
100.6 billion tons, or 100,600 million tons, this is the sum of all materials the world consumes in a year in 2017.
0.4%, or less than half a percent point, this is how much plastics we consume in a year compared to all other materials such as minerals, ores, fossil fuels, crops and trees...
Less than 3%, this is how much plastics represent in terms of fossil fuel demand in a year, let's say 5% if the energy required to produce them is taken into account.
Plastic wastes represent just 0.7% from all the wastes produced in a year (2016 data for the UK).
If all synthetic polymers produced in a year were burnt, it would add only 0.14 ppm of CO₂ or 0.03% to the 414 ppm of CO₂ already in the atmosphere.

A Burning Plastic Planet

The planet is on fire because we are burning plastics, there are millions - or perhaps billions - of tons of plastic that accumulate in the oceans, plastic waste takes hundreds or maybe thousands of years to degrade or possibly never disappear, it is raining plastic particles that are everywhere in the food we eat so that we are eating plastic for dinner, there will soon be more plastic than fish in the oceans, plastics exterminate marine animals, cocktails of toxic additives in plastics intoxicate the food we are eating that is killing us, plastics release toxic combustion products that pollute the air we breath and destroy our health, do I forget any thing here?

How Much Plastic Is It?

But wait a minute!

How much plastic is this, what quantities do we talk about?

Fact is, we know, and we know it quite precisely.

Chart 1: Passage of fossil fuel feedstock through the chemical industry in 2017 [1]

All synthetic plastics, fibers and rubbers add up to 420 million tons in 2017.

Sounds big, huge, humongous, gigantic, unfathomable.

Really?

Materials Consumption of the World

Then how much does it represent relatively to the world's consumption of materials?

Chart 2: Global Materials Demand [2]

100.6 billion tons, or 100,600 million tons, this is the sum of all materials the word consumes in a year in 2017.

Then, all synthetic plastics, fibers and rubbers correspond to 420 / 100,600 = 0.4% of the total.

Less than half a percent point, this is how much plastics we consume in a year compared to all other materials such as minerals, ores, fossil fuels, crops and trees...

Plastic is made from fossil fuels - oil, gas and coal - from which the world consumes 15.1 billion tons - or 15,100 million tons - in a years in 2017.

Here again, plastics correspond to only 420 / 15,100 = , or 2.8% of the fossil fuels produced in a year.

Less than 3%, this is how much plastics represent in terms of fossil fuel demand in a year, let's say 5% if the energy required to produce them is taken into account [1].

Drowning in Plastics, Really?

Now one could say - and many do not shy away from arguing - that plastic waste is everywhere, invading the ecosphere, polluting the environment, filling the air, contaminating soils, clogging waterways, sullying the oceans, polluting the atmosphere. In short plastic is the only waste that matters, because it is the only one we see.

Global statistics may not be available, but data have been reported for the United Kingdom.

Chart 3: Waste generation by waste material, United Kingdom, 2016 [3]

To put things in perspectives, plastic wastes represent just 0.7% from all the waste produced in the UK in a year, and it is reasonable to assume that a similar order of magnitude applies anywhere else in the world, or at least as a global average.

This is 4.5 times less than paper, that has such a deleterious carbon footprint as demonstrated by countless LCA studies such as 18 of them reviewed on the Plastics Paradox page [4].

Plastics Are Taking Our Breath Away

Last but not least, it is often heard about plastics being responsible for global warming through the incommensurate CO2 emissions resulting from burning plastics for Waste-to-Energy purposes.

Let's do the calculation!

Global synthetic polymer production in a year: 420 million tons [1]
Carbon content: 307 MMTA or about 73% [5]
CO₂ equivalent amount: 1,126 MMTA or 1.13.10⁹ metric tons
CO₂ weight in the atmosphere: 3.23 billion metric tonnes (3.23.10¹² metric tons) [6]
Ratio of CO₂ from burning plastics / atmospheric CO₂: 0.035%
CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere: 414 ppm [6]
CO₂ emissions from burning all the plastics produced in a year: 0.145 ppm

Now let's be clear about this:

If all synthetic polymers produced in a year were burnt, it would add only 0.145 ppm of CO₂ or 0.035% to the 414 ppm of CO₂ already in the atmosphere.

But this is even before considering that "only" 12% of all plastics produced globally are burnt every year, something the green zealots are vocal about about, but meaning on the contrary that 88% of used plastics are NOT burned in actuality, lowering the total emissions from burning-or more correctly-incinerating plastics down to 0.145 x 12% = 0.017 ppm.

Let me repeat this:

"the alarming amount of plastic that is burned" in a year is adding 0.017 ppm of CO₂ to the atmosphere, at which rate it would take 58 years to add one single ppm of additional CO₂ to the atmosphere,

which should obviously be a motive of serious concern, isn't it?

Plastics, the Wonder Material

The reality is that plastic consumption is a hallmark of Progress. The most economically developed a country is (in terms of GNI per capita), the higher the per capita consumption of plastics (on a log/log scale)^[4]. Plastics are a technological miracle delivering invaluable services to the economy and the people of the world, they have enormously, over-proportionally contributed to human flourishing, economic growth, health improvement and wealth increase and it is undeniable that a world without plastics is unimaginable. Without Plastics, the world as we know it could not exist. Then, do not fall victim to the panic-making, greenwashing propaganda of the plastic bashers as they have an agenda. I don't bother, and so shouldn't you.

Chart 4: Plastics Consumption: a Hallmark of Progress [4]

Plastic Consumption, a Hallmark of Progress

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