Local Opinion: To combat climate change, we must produce and use less plastic

May 21, 2023

The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

Re: the May 14 article "ByFusion to become Tucson fixture."

Kudos to City Council Member Steve Kozachik in his effort to deal with the ever-growing plastic waste problem. However, turning throwaway plastic items into building blocks doesn't get at the root of the problem: the overproduction and overconsumption of plastic packaging.

Worldwide, plastic waste generation has skyrocketed since the 1970s. Today, we produce around 400 million tons of plastic waste every year — and almost 40% is from packaging, including single-use products like utensils and food containers that often become trash within minutes.

Unfortunately, plastic recycling doesn't work well. Globally, less than 10% of the plastics we’ve used have been recycled. The vast majority are landfilled, lost to the environment, or incinerated. So what's the problem? There are simply too many different types of plastic, making it hard to collect, sort and melt them down for recycling and reuse. Instead of being recycled into products with the same function, most of the recovered plastic packaging is downcycled into something of lower quality or functionality like a fleece garment, carpeting, or components for plastic lumber.

Every piece of plastic has a history. Virtually all of the plastics we use today are produced from chemicals sourced from fossil fuels like natural gas and crude oil. Plastic generates climate impacts throughout its life cycle. In the U.S., plastic starts out as ethane, a byproduct of fracked natural gas production. The extraction and transportation of this petrochemical feedstock is energy-intensive and creates greenhouse gas emissions. Processing ethane into ethylene—a building block for many kinds of plastics—is also greenhouse-gas intensive.

The fossil fuel industry is looking to petrochemicals, and plastics in particular, as a major growth market. Big companies like Exxon Mobil, Shell and Saudi Aramco are poised to quadruple plastics production by 2050, largely to flood emerging markets with single-use packaging. This expansion will have huge potential consequences for the climate, threatening our chances to keep global temperature rise below the critical 1.5-degree Celsius threshold. By 2050, plastic production and disposal could generate greenhouse-gas emissions equivalent to 615 coal plants annually and use up to 13% of the global carbon budget.

As things stand, we won't be able to recycle our way out of the plastics waste crisis. There is too much flow of new virgin plastic entering our environment every day, just like a giant oil spill. The plastics industry is now touting "chemical recycling" as a solution to the problem, but it exacerbates the climate crisis and does little to curb the production of new plastics. This method most often uses high heat to turn plastic waste back into fossil fuels to be burned. These technologies are risky, expensive and hardly qualify as "recycling."

To truly tackle the plastics epidemic, we must rethink how products are brought to people. That could include refill and reuse systems, plastic-free packaging, environmentally-friendly materials, or a combination of approaches. This transition will take time and investment, but it is crucial for consumer goods companies to make product redesign, innovation and new delivery models a higher priority.

We, too, can take daily actions to reduce our individual plastic footprint: rethinking what we need, taking reusable bags for shopping, avoiding overly packaged items, and supporting sustainable local alternatives and reuse models. It's also important that we support the implementation of policy and legislation that will curb plastics production, boost circular design, improve mechanical recycling and hold the plastics industry accountable for managing its waste.

Until we rethink our relationship with plastic, we will never break free from it. Tackling climate change means taking on plastics, not just how they are disposed of, but how they are designed, produced and used.

Follow these steps to easily submit a letter to the editor or guest opinion to the Arizona Daily Star.

Kevin Greene

Kevin Greene is Chair of Sustainable Tucson's Zero Waste Working Group. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Respond: Write a letter to the editor | Write a guest opinion

Subscribe to stay connected to Tucson. A subscription helps you access more of the local stories that keep you connected to the community.

Get opinion pieces, letters and editorials sent directly to your inbox weekly!

"Without such specialized expertise, the City is in danger of ending up with the short straw"

The following is the opinion and analysis of the writer:

"It is vitally important that citizens are able to address elected officials to share their concerns and opinions."

"I see Tucson organizations pointing to Portland's successes in their mission to 'build upon the assets that make our city unique' without als…