The Plastic Water Bottle Industry Is Booming. Here’s Why That’s a Huge Problem
The bottled water industry is a juggernaut. More than 1 million bottles of water are sold every minute around the world and the industry shows no sign of slowing down, according to a new report. Global sales of bottled water are expected to nearly double by 2030. But the industry’s enormous global success comes at a huge environmental, climate and social cost, according to the report published Thursday by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and Health, which analyzes the industry’s global impacts.
‘Compostable Plastic’ Doesn’t Live Up to Its Environmental Claims. Here’s What You Can Focus On Instead
So as demand for climate action escalates and the dangers of plastics become more evident, consumers are turning to so-called compostable and biodegradable alternatives for things like food containers, cups, plates, cutlery and bags, in hopes of mitigating further climate and environmental harms. But unfortunately, researchers say those products are also a problem.
Single-Use Plastic Is Wreaking Havoc on the Planet. Here’s What You Can Do to Minimize Your Impact.
Plastics do not break down once they're thrown into nature. And, alarmingly, only around 9% plastic in the US is actually recycled, according to the Environmental Protection Agency — even the stuff you specifically threw into the recycle bin. What you might not realize is this isn't just a pollution problem. It's a climate problem. And by the time we start talking about recycling, the damage is already done.
A New Plant in Indiana Uses a Process Called ‘Pyrolysis’ to Recycle Plastic Waste. Critics Say It’s Really Just Incineration.
After two years, Brightmark Energy has yet to get the factory up and running. Environmentalists say pyrolysis requires too much energy, emits greenhouse gases and pollutants, and turns plastic waste into new, dirty fossil fuels.
Collision Course: Will the Plastics Treaty Slow the Plastics Rush?
The interlacing pipelines of a massive new plastics facility gleam in the sunshine beside the rolling waters of the Ohio River. I’m sitting on a hilltop above it, among poplars and birdsongs in rural Beaver County, Pennsylvania, 30 miles north of Pittsburgh. The area has experienced tremendous change over the past few years — with more soon to come. The ethane “cracker plant” belongs to Royal Dutch Shell, and after 10 years and $6 billion it’s about to go online. Soon it will transform a steady flow of fracked Marcellus gas into billions of plastic pellets — a projected 1.6 million tons of them per year, each the size of a pea.
As Alarm Over Plastic Grows, Saudis Ramp up Production in the US
The flares started last December, an event Errol Summerlin, a former legal-aid lawyer, and his neighbors had been bracing for since 2017. After the flames, nipping at the night sky like lashes from a heavenly monster, came the odor, a gnarled concoction of steamed laundry, and burned tires. Thus did the Saudi royal family mark the expansion of its far-flung petrochemical empire to San Patricio County, Texas, a once-rural stretch of flatlands across Nueces Bay from Corpus Christi. It arrived in the form of Gulf Coast Growth Ventures, or GCGV, a plant that sprawls over 16 acres between the towns of Portland and Gregory. The complex contains a circuit board of pipes and steel tanks that cough out steam, flames, and toxic substances as it creates the building blocks for plastic from natural gas liquids.
Judith Enck: SCOTUS Curtails Biden’s Climate Goals
The recent decision from the Supreme Court limits the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. It’s being described as a ‘gut punch' by some environmental activists. Judith Enck, a former EPA regional administrator, joined Errol to react to the ruling, explain how the Biden administration can move forward despite it and discuss what it means for New York.
Plastic Is Everywhere Except In Democrats' Plans For A Fossil Fuel-Free Future
It’s the overlooked — often forgotten — petroleum product left out of Democrats’ clean energy agenda: plastics. The petrochemical industry is on pace to become the leading driver of global oil demand and potentially more difficult for opponents of greenhouse gases to eliminate than gasoline-powered cars.
Apocalyptic Painter Alexis Rockman and Plastic-As-the-New-Coal ...
A pair of disparate but always connected conversations on the Green Radio Hour with Jon Bowermaster, featuring superstar environmental painter Alexis Rockman and his latest exhibition about sinking ships and, from Beyond Plastics, Alexis Goldsmith and Eve Fox on the group's in-depth report on how plastic manufacturing is replacing coal as the most insidious ingredient to a fast-warming planet.
Letter: Plastics are the new coal in carbon emissions
It is imperative we switch to renewable energy as quickly as possible to save our planet. It is also extremely important to understand where all our emissions originate. We need to publish the fact that plastic is the new coal.
Plastic Is the New Coal, Says New Report: Here’s why that’s trouble for COP26
Your plastic water bottle will likely spend its golden years floating around the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, but its life began thousands of feet underground. How it got from there to you—and why it was made in the first place—has big implications for global climate goals.
Pena: Climate change and plastic
Climate change and plastic waste are two of the big environmental problems we have today. In almost all the literature I read on print and the internet, these two problems are independent of each other and addressed separately. It is only recently that I stumbled upon a study that links these two global environmental issues.
How to make COP26 a success? Talk about plastics
The annual climate conference needs world leaders to commit to tangible goals. Reducing plastic production is an urgent issue
Role of plastics as a climate change driver to grow, researchers say
Scientists recently figured out that expected surges in plastics manufacturing may cause enough greenhouse gas emissions to cancel out gains made through closures of most of the country’s coal-fired power plants.
The Climate and Plastic
Plastic pollution is one of the biggest environmental threats to this planet, and according to a report by the advocacy group Beyond Plastics, greenhouse gas emissions from plastic production in the United States are on track to outpace domestic coal emissions. Judith Enck, a former regional administrator of the EPA and founder of Beyond Plastics, co-authored the report and joins Living on Earth’s Bobby Bascomb to discuss.
CLIMATE MARCH: ‘PLASTICS ARE THE NEW COAL’
Recent research entitled The new coal: plastics and climate change shows in detail the scale of emissions in each link of the plastic chain in the United States. The chain goes from the extraction of shale gas at one end to the incineration of discarded plastic at the other.
TRASH AND BURN: BIG BRANDS STOKE CEMENT KILNS WITH PLASTIC WASTE AS RECYCLING FALTERS
Consumer goods giants are funding projects to send plastic trash to cement plants, where it is burned as cheap energy. They’re touting it as a way to keep plastic out of dumps and use less fossil fuel. Critics say it undercuts recycling efforts and worsens air quality. One said it was “like moving the landfill from the ground to the sky.”
US plastics revival hits the poor, will overtake coal for GHGs
To date Rethink Research has not bothered itself with plastics, although expecting to have to address the complex industry sooner or later, but a report out this week, means it has to become a new focus.
Plastics Will Outpace Coal in U.S. Carbon Emissions, Study Shows
Plastics will outpace coal plants in the U.S. by 2030 in terms of their contributions to climate change, according to a report released Oct. 21 by Beyond Plastics, a project at Bennington College in Vermont.
US plastics' emissions could overtake coal’s by 2030
US plastics are on course to take over from coal in terms of greenhouse gas emissions by 2030. According to a report from Bennington College’s Beyond Plastics project, the plastics industry in the US will be more polluting than the country’s coal industry by the end of the decade.