Bloomberg: The Climate Impact of Our Insatiable Plastic Addiction
According to the UN Environment Program, in the 1950s the world produced 2 million metric tons of plastic. Now the amount has risen to more than 400 million metric tons and if the current production stays on track, yearly plastic production could reach 1.1 billion metric tons by 2050. On the article posted on December 30th on Bloomberg, Leslie Kaufman talks about the environmental costs of plastic.
Some of the costs include plastic crisis in Accra, Ghana, where mounds of garbage stand on beaches and clog streams, and the health problems people who live near a plant that melts down plastic suffer from in Bangkok. Plastics also add significantly to the emissions that cause climate change and were responsible for 1.8 billion metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2019. United States has become a global center of plastic production and one of the biggest markets for plastic goods.
Accra’s drains are so choked with plastic trash that it floods every rainy season. Photographer: Nipah Dennis/Bloomberg
The plastic industry, governments, academics and activists have offered solutions to the crisis, but they don’t agree on a course of action. UN held the first round of talks to negotiate a global plastic treaty, but the nations were split on the best approach. The plastic industry is pushing recycling, but currently only about 9% of plastic worldwide is recycled. Many activists say the only real solution is to drastically cut the amount of plastic produced. According to the analysts at BloombergNEF clean energy research group, the best hope of decarbonizing plastics is to invest in improvements along the supply chain, from consumer product designs that require less plastic to electrification of plastic plants.
