Matthew Taylor - $180 billion investment in plastic factories feeds global packaging binge / Isher J. Ahluwalia, Almitra Patel Cities at Crossroads: Perils of plastics waste
The global plastic
binge which is already causing widespread damage to oceans, habitats and food
chains, is set to increase dramatically over the next 10 years after
multibillion dollar investments in a new generation of plastics plants in the
US. Fossil fuel companies
are among those who have ploughed more than $180bn since 2010 into new
“cracking” facilities that will produce the raw material for everyday plastics
from packaging to bottles, trays and cartons.
The new facilities –
being built by corporations like Exxon Mobile Chemical and Shell Chemical –
will help fuel a 40% rise in plastic production in the next decade, according
to experts, exacerbating the plastic pollution crisis that scientist
warn already risks “near permanent pollution of the earth.”
“We could be locking in decades of expanded
plastics production at precisely the time the world is realising we should use
far less of it,” said Carroll Muffett, president of the US Center for International Environmental Law,
which has analysed the
plastic industry. “Around 99% of the
feedstock for plastics is fossil fuels, so we are looking at the same
companies, like Exxon and Shell, that have helped create the climate crisis.
There is a deep and pervasive relationship between oil and gas companies and
plastics.”
Greenpeace UK’s senior
oceans campaigner Louise Edge said any increase in the amount of plastic ending
up in the oceans would have a disastrous impact. “We are already
producing more disposable plastic than we can deal with, more in the last
decade than in the entire twentieth century, and millions
of tonnes of it are ending up in our oceans.” The huge investment in
plastic production has been driven by the shale gas boom in the US. This has
resulted in one of the raw materials used to produce plastic resin – natural
gas liquids – dropping dramatically in price. The American Chemistry Council says
that since 2010 this has led to $186bn dollars being invested in 318 new
projects. Almost half of them are already under construction or have been
completed. The rest are at the planning stage.
“I can summarise [the
boom in plastics facilities] in two words,” Kevin Swift, chief economist at the
ACC, told the Guardian. “Shale gas.” He added: “There has
been a revolution in the US with the shale gas technologies, with the fracking,
the horizontal drilling. The cost of our raw material base has gone down by
roughly two thirds.” The findings come amid
growing concern about the scale of plastics pollution around the world. Earlier
this year scientists warned that it risked
near permanent contamination of the planet and at a UN environment
conference in Kenya this month the scale of plastic in the sea was described as
an “ocean armageddon”... read more:
Isher J. Ahluwalia, Almitra Patel Cities at Crossroads: Perils of plastics waste
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