Hello there!

Last week, we spoke about how global brands such as Coca-Cola is associated with plastic waste generation. In today’s post, we will be looking at another big contributor to plastic pollution; the fossil fuel industry.

Despite the plastic pollution crisis on hand, fossil fuel companies are still investing heavily in new infrastructures to extract oil and gas for virgin plastic production (Carbon Tracker, 2020). This strongly suggests that they do not envisage a wholesale shift to recycled plastic. If business as usual continues, industry estimates predict that plastic production could double by 2030-2035 and triple by 2050, in comparison to 2015 (World Economic Forum, 2016).

So how do these fossil fuel and petrochemical companies get away with it?

Well to put it simply, these companies are using recycling as a smokescreen. Using what is known as “Chemical recycling” or “advanced recycling”, the industry convinces the public this process can mitigate the massive environmental costs of single-use plastic despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary (Break free from plastic, 2021).

Currently, commercial-scale technologies promoted by industry as “chemical recycling” or “advanced recycling” involve one of two related “plastic-to-fuel” processes: gasification and pyrolysis. Both use heat to break down the plastic polymer, not into its constituent monomers, but respectively into either a hydrogen-rich gaseous mixture called “syngas” or a cocktail of various gaseous and liquid hydrocarbons. While either of these outputs can then in theory be further processed to create olefin monomers from which new plastic can be produced, in practice, they tend not to be of sufficient quality (Lopez et al, 2018). Instead, they are refined into fuel which is then burned. This produces greenhouse gas emissions that are just as much as conventional fossil fuel, which raises the question of how exactly it is “recycling”.

Moving forward, be careful to not get fooled by the term “recycling”. It is key to find out how exactly are these companies recycle their plastic waste and its associated environmental impacts.

References

Break free from plastic. (2021, October 25). The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo named top plastic polluters for the fourth year in a row. Retrieved February 5from https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/2021/10/25/the-coca-cola-company-and-pepsico-named-top-plastic-polluters-for-the-fourth-year-in-a-row/

Carbon Tracker. (2020). Fault lines: How diverging oil and gas company strategies link to stranded asset risk. Retrieved February 5 from https://carbontracker.org/reports/fault-lines-stranded-asset/

Lopez, G., Artetxe, M., Amutio, M., Alvarez, J., Bilbao, J., & Olazar, M. (2018). Recent advances in the gasification of waste plastics. A critical overview. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 82, 576–596. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rser.2017.09.032

World Economic Forum. (2016). The New Plastics Economy: Rethinking the future of plastics. Retrieved February 5 from http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_New_Plastics_Economy.pdf