Changing the Habits of the Earth: The Plastic Impact of the fossil fuel industry on the planet, and how you can save money and protect the environment

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It has become known that single-use plastic is harmful to the planet. The process of creating these materials emits enormous amounts of planet-warming gases and it can take hundreds of years to break down in a landfill.

From its production to its end-of-life, plastic belches greenhouse gas emissions at every stage of its life cycle. Experts say the convenience of plastic comes at a terrible price for the climate, and what you can do to reduce its impact.

It is the year of 2050 and humankind has made significant progress in decarbonizing. That’s thanks in large part to the negligible price of solar and wind power, which was cratering even back in 2022. Yet the fossil fuel industry hasn’t just doubled down on making plastics from oil and gas—instead, as the World Economic Forum warned would happen, it has tripled production from 2016 levels. In 2050, humans are churning out trillions of pounds of plastic a year, and in the process emitting the greenhouse gas equivalent of over 600 coal-fired power plants. We stopped using oil and gas as fuel three decades ago, but we still use a lot of it as plastic.

“It’s a climate killer,” Enck told CNN. We can finally see an increase in renewable energy and energy efficiency. Plastic production was the plan B for the fossil fuel industry because they were losing market share on transportation and electricity generation.

“If you look at where more than 90% of the climate pollution is released by the plastic industry, it’s in 18 communities in the whole country, and they’re all low-income communities and the residents are more likely to be people of color,” Enck said, outlining other findings in the report. “Plastic production is an environmental justice issue.”

When the bathtub is overflowing, you want to shut off the faucet before you run for the mop; you don’t want to just run for the mop. It’s the mop. If the faucet is not on, you are not going to get very far. We have to reduce the amount of plastic that we make at the source, and that means turning off the faucet.

You won’t know what you can change until you take stock. Take note of all the things in your home. Most of the single-use stuff you’ll find around the kitchen and the bathroom. Then, armed with a list of where you use single-use plastic the most, you can start to make replacements.

If you want to cut back on plastic waste, buy in bulk. Almonds, beans, and rice are not in plastic bags. Bring your own reusable containers to fill with your favorite bulk foods. Make sure to eliminate the scale before you fill them because you will pay more for the weight of the container.

Choose paper (or no) packaging over plastic — If you’re looking at two versions of the same product and one is packaged in paper or cardboard and the other is in plastic, then the choice is obvious. And look for plastic-free options like bar shampoo.

Restaurants that typically provide plastic are the ones to refuse plastic utensils. Tell the restaurant you don’t want to put it in your bag.

Ultimately, Savitz said consumers need to continue urging major corporations to provide plastic-free solutions and help support refill and reuse programs to encourage society to shy away from plastic use and stave off the worst impacts of the climate crisis.

“Our country is burning and flooding and hurricanes are coming earlier and earlier,” she told CNN. “I really think it’s shocking that one of the things that’s really leading to that is plastics, and it’s hurting us in other ways, too. If we were able to reduce our production of plastics as a country and as a global society, we would be taking a bite out of climate change.

So what do you think, it’s just plastic? If you swallow a shirt button, it will pass straight through you. But when it’s broken down into microscopic fibers, spherules, and shards, it behaves very differently. These particles leach out toxic chemicals, including carcinogens. Their rough surfaces snag other toxins and microbes, transporting them to new environments and into bodies. Small creatures, like plankton and insects, mistake microplastics for food, so they get less nutrition, grow slower, reproduce less, and sicken more easily because of the effects on the food chain. Microplastics have been shown to mess with gene expression in animals. The damage that can be done by plastic microfibers is similar to that caused by Asbestos.

Ultimately, compostable products are designed to fully decompose only at industrial compost facilities that regulate the temperature to achieve peak composting efficiency. But most of these products don’t wind up there, Enck and Purkiss said – they end up at regular landfills, where they will persist for years, just like conventional plastics. Or they will be burned in trash incinerators, where they release methane, a potent greenhouse gas.

“In the lab, where [these plastics] have been tested and have been paid for by a manufacturer, they behaved in one way and they’ve been determined to be compostable in a home composter,” Danielle Purkiss, researcher and lead author of the study, told CNN. “But what’s happened is we’ve seen a lot of these pieces of packaging with certification still don’t break down in these different home composting conditions.”

Carbon negative bioplastics could go a step toward a more sustainable future: A study by Enck, Purkiss and Stegmann

In addition to the greenhouse gases released from industrial facilities making these products, the crops used as feedstock, such as corn or sugar beets, also require significant amounts of fossil fuels, farmland and water to create them — all resources that could instead go to actual food, Enck said.

More than 1,600 people in the UK have voluntarily tried home composting, thanks to Purkiss and colleagues at the University College London. Purkiss said other people could join the “Big Compost Experiment” in order to learn more about the impact of these products.

One way a citizen can affect change is through their buying decisions. “They need to put pressure on manufacturers and business to move towards more properly sustainable models.”

If you have disposable bags ready, bring them with you to the grocery store because they come with your favorite produce. Use refillable mugs or thermos cups for your coffee or tea while on the go, and same goes for a refillable water bottle.

But let’s say there was a large-scale shift to bioplastics—what would that mean for future emissions? That’s what a new paper in the journal Nature set out to estimate, finding that if a slew of variables were to align—and that’s a very theoretical if—bioplastics could go carbon-negative.

The study’s lead author, Paul Stegmann, states that we have a CO2 price in place, a circular economy strategy, and a subsidy for the production of fuels, which are all related to this. If all three conditions are met, he says, it is enough to push emissions into the negative.