If you are paying attention, you know that the ecosystem that sustains humans on Earth is in trouble. The frequency and severity of extreme weather events is increasing; the glaciers and polar ice are melting; sea level is rising. Climate change is happening and its effects are increasingly being felt. The Earth’s atmosphere is warming, and it is unquestionably due to the propensity of Capital to commodify the Earth and to externalize costs onto the environment.
In its hunger for low-cost energy, Capital has commodified Earth’s geology and externalized the costs of that exploitation: digging up ancient carbon deposits, burning them to power profits, and dumping the waste into Earth’s atmosphere –causing the buildup of greenhouse gasses that has resulted in global heating. This heating is now irreversibly changing the climate of the planet, with unpredictable, but assuredly detrimental consequences. Some of our best minds, who study the effects of global warming, assure us that we face a future of increasingly erratic and destructive weather events, rising sea levels that will inundate coastal areas, increasing species extinction, and mass human suffering and migration. They also assure us that there is a way to slow down, stop, and ultimately, perhaps, reverse the current trends –if we have the collective will to act. The solution is clear: we must transform human energy systems away from fossil fuels and towards technologies with zero or negative CO2 emissions, and do this as quickly as possible. The stakes for humanity could not be higher, and the implications for Capital are profound.
Unfortunately, global warming is only the tip of the iceberg of existentially threatening damages caused by the externalities of the fossil fuel industry. The damages are increasingly visible in landscapes scarred by coal, oil, and gas extraction and in massive oil spills that pollute the oceans. But nowhere are the damages more critical, and closer to home, than in the harm caused to the Earth, to animal and plant life, and to our human bodies by the production and use of petrochemicals: fertilizers, pesticides, industrial chemicals and, most significantly, plastics.
About Plastics
Plastics are made from oil and gas. The now ubiquitous plastic water bottle and zip loc bag, and millions of other plastic products, began as plant and animal life. Millions to hundreds of millions of years ago, the remains of carbon-based organisms built up on land and seafloor surfaces and were gradually covered over by sediments. Over time, pressure and heat turned the sediments to rock and the plant and animal remains into oil, gas, and coal. All of this sequestered carbon remained buried in the earth for millions of years until humans discovered that it could be extracted and burned for cheap and plentiful energy. It was the energy of burning coal that powered the Industrial Revolution, and the energy of burning oil that powered the post-war industrial expansion.
Origins of oil and gas
Early in the 20th century it was discovered that the hydrocarbon molecules (monomers) in oil and gas could also be made into a cheap, abundant, synthetic material that had great flexibility and many uses; a material that could replace naturally occurring materials such as rubber, ivory, metal, and wood. This material was plastics (polymers). The use and manufacture of plastics greatly increased during WWII, followed by an explosion of consumer-focused plastics production after the war. Plastics played a significant role in the US industrial war effort and, post-war, enabled a rapid increase in the availability of consumer goods as more and more uses were found for plastics: as substitutes for scarce natural materials and in new, previously unimagined applications. It was a ‘miracle’ of modern technology. It was also a source of huge corporate profits and of immensely harmful and pervasive externalities.
The Externalities of Single-Use Plastics
Plastic waste
Perhaps the most damaging of all plastics is single-use plastic packaging: bottles, bags, clam shells, etc. that are ubiquitous in the consumer marketplace. Let’s take a look at the plastic water bottle and its evolution from geology to plastic waste: a journey from the Paleozoic to the “Plasticine”. Most plastic water bottles are made of a material called PET (polyethylene terephthalate). PET is made from ethylene glycol which is made from ethylene which is made from ethane, a hydrocarbon that is prevalent in fracked shale gas and can be a byproduct in oil production.
The journey from ancient oil or gas deposit begins with extraction. Oil and gas production is messy business and its environmental impacts are well documented, but here are a few of the big ones:
Methane and Ethane emissions. Oil and gas wells leak the greenhouse gasses methane and ethane, which while relatively short-lived, are many time more potent than CO2. It is becoming increasingly apparent that these emissions from are having a significant impact on global warming.
Groundwater contamination from fracking. The wastewater from fracking must be disposed of and is typically injecting into underground reservoirs where there is a risk of polluting adjacent ground water and inducing seismic activity.
Cleanup after bankruptcy. Fracking is extremely profitable, but many of the companies engaged in fracking are financially precarious and vulnerable to market volatility, which means that when the market goes bust, as it inevitably will, the (leaky) wells and well injection waste are left for state and federal governments to clean up.
Oil and gas are raw materials that contain many usable and some unusable substances. PET is made from the molecule ethane, and the ethane must be extracted from “wet” (unrefined) natural gas or refined from crude oil, then “cracked” at high temperature to produce ethylene and then ethylene glycol, which is the primary building block for PET plastics. Ethylene glycol is combined with terephthalic acid to create PET resin pellets from which beverage containers are made. These are heavy industrial processes that frequently take place in facilities located in or near poor and minority communities. These operations, in addition to producing CO2 emissions, have their own externalities:
Smog. These processes create benzine, an ozone gas that creates smog and correlates to high instances of asthma in exposed populations.
Plastic pollution. Plastic pellets from manufacturing facilities often leak into local waterways where they harm wildlife and accumulate in the human food chain.
Chemical Pollution. Some of the chemicals used in the production of ethylene, and catalysts for polymerization are known human toxins. These include known carcinogens such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene. Many more have unknown but potentially harmful effects (aside: there are over 100,000 synthetic organic chemicals in existence, many of them derivatives of fossil fuels, the vast majority of which, very little, if anything is known about their effects on human biology).
Human health impacts. Communities located near petrochemical manufacturing suffer from high rates of respiratory illness, reproductive dysfunction, and cancer, creating “cancer alleys” in areas of South Texas, Louisiana, and now in Appalachia.
Ocean dead zones. Pollution of waterways from petrochemical manufacturing contribute to “dead zones” such as the one that extends for hundreds of miles into the Gulf of Mexico at the mouth of the Mississippi River.
Bottled water is a product that causes a great deal of social harm. And, while it provides a source of clean drinking water to communities that are lacking safe water, it is no substitute for the regulations and infrastructure investment needed to provide what should be a public good: clean, safe, accessible water. Bottled water which is sold with such marketing slogans as ‘mountain spring water’ is generally manufactured from filtered municipal water and contributes to the depletion of local water resources. And, ironically, the very industrial processes that go into the production of the plastic bottle are significant contributors to the degraded water quality that generates demand for the bottled water. It is an iniquitous cycle.
But the social damage of bottled water does not stop here. Plastic bottles can leach toxins into their contents. Plastics (in particular PVC plastics used in Plastics pipes, children’s toys, teething rings, etc.), notoriously contain harmful chemicals, including chemicals known as phthalates that have been linked to a myriad of human health problems including profound impacts on the human reproductive system. Despite industry claims that PET plastics do not contain phthalates, there are numerous studies that show that PET plastics leach phthalates when heated to around 185°F, which can easily happen to that water bottle that you leave in your car on a hot day. You may literally be poisoning yourself with a bottle of ‘mountain spring water’. Here again, society is left to pay the costs of social harms caused by industry externalities.
Post-Consumer Plastic Waste
Projected growth in plastics production and emissions
The waste created by single-use plastic packaging is perhaps the most existentially threatening impact of plastics industry. The disposal of waste from single-use plastics is a major polluter of the land, the oceans and the atmosphere. Most visibly, plastic waste litters the landscape –as is obvious when driving down any country road or walking down a city street. Additionally, millions of tonnes of plastic waste enter waterways annually, where it makes its way to the oceans. It can sink to the ocean floor or collect in global eddies such as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch”, and eventually is broken down by sun and water into a micro-plastics sludge which ultimately enters the human food chain. Along the way, plastic waste strangles, asphyxiates, and clogs the digestion of ocean and avian wildlife. And, much plastic waste that is collected is disposed of by incineration –further contributing to air toxicity and the buildup of greenhouse gasses. The externalities of plastic waste are extensive and profound.
As bad as this is, it will get worse. The plastics industry is projected to triple production by 2050. The plastics industry tells us that this can all be accommodated if we will recycle. However, in the five decades since the advent of plastics recycling, less than 10% of plastics have been recycled. Even PET, the most frequently recycled of plastics is recycled at a rate of only 27% in the U.S. This means that of 9 billion tons of plastic ever produced, over 8 billion tons is still in the environment, locked in landfills, atmospheric CO2, or absorbed into the oceans. Of the over 100 billion PET plastic bottles that will be sold in the US this year, more than 70 billion bottles will remain in the environment. The net effect is that the plastic just keeps piling up in a never-ending stream of pollution, going into landfills, the oceans, and the atmosphere. And, plastics take 100 to 1000 years to degrade in the environment, and it is uncertain what the results of degradation will be. The only thing that is certain is that plastic waste is harmful and will be with us for a very long time.
How are they getting away with this?
The magnitude and extent of the negative social and environmental impacts of the plastics industry is astounding. Over the entire plastics value chain, from resource extraction to the disposal of consumer waste the externalities of Capital are extensive and existentially threatening. To recap:
- CO2, Methane, and Ethane emissions from oil and gas extraction, petrochemical production and plastic waste incineration are significant contributors to global warming.
- Toxic chemicals are emitted into the air, groundwater, and rivers and streams from fracking and petrochemical manufacturing; chemicals leach from consumer products into human bodies and enter the human food chain through the buildup of micro-plastics in the bodies of ocean animals. These synthetic organic chemical releases into the environment have significant human health impacts, and these impacts disproportionately effect poor and minority communities.
- The health of the oceans are being severely degraded by extreme buildups of plastic and other petrochemical pollution creating dead zones, immense garbage zones, destroying ocean and aviary life, and ultimately destroying a resource that is essential to human survival.
The corporations benefiting from these externalities are reaping enormous profits and, in many cases, receiving government subsidies. And their plans are to triple plastics production, and presumably profits, over the next thirty years!
As I wrote at the beginning of this article, the implications of plastics for Capital is profound. Billions of dollars in annual corporate profits are tied to plastics. Plastics production generates $580B in annual revenues, and is increasing rapidly. And, this number does not represent the revenues from oil and gas production, cost savings of using single-use packaging, or revenues generated by the recycling industry.
All of this is built and maintained with the support of propaganda, and a corrupt political system. The public has been hoodwinked into believing that plastics are necessary, good, and recyclable. A corrupt system of governance creates a situation where wealth = access, and all too often there is a revolving door between the regulators and the regulated. And unfortunately, because of the disproportionate influence of the US economy, and the disproportionate wastefulness of US consumerism, the duplicity of US corporations and the corruption of our government negatively effects the entire planet.
How are they getting away with this indeed!
A system sustained by industry propaganda.
Keep America Beautiful: a propaganda coup
In the early 1950’s when disposable bottles and cans were being introduced by the beverage industry, the state of Vermont passed a law outlawing disposable beverage containers. Shortly thereafter, a consortium of corporations invested in the adoption of single-use packaging pulled off what has to be one of the most successful and outlandish propaganda coups ever perpetuated: “Keep America Beautiful”. The story of this grand deception, cloaked as a public service, is brilliantly told in this article. Think about it: the industry is saying “Our waste isn’t our problem, it is your problem and you should be a good citizen and clean up for us”.
“A complete shift in the relationship between packaging, manufacturers, and end consumers took place. Where customers in the past purchased a product, consumer goods firms could now also pass along the cost of packaging to the customer—as a new feature no less! Consumers could now simply throw a bottle away once they satiated their thirst. Instead of having to lug bottles back from the beach or park to return to the store, leave them on the ground or literally toss them wherever. Out of sight, out of mind, right?”
For those too young to remember, there was a time when bottled beverages: coke, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, etc, came in glass bottles. These bottles had a redemption value and were collected by the bottlers and re-used or recycled. It was rare to find discarded bottles, as they had a monetary value, and the impacts of packaging production were considerably less, as bottles were washed and re-used, and glass is infinitely recyclable. But responsibly dealing with packaging waste has costs, and throw-away plastic (and cheap glass) bottles provided a way to eliminate those costs. But there was a problem: millions of tons of waste.
In the early 1970’s. with increasing plastic waste and citizen awareness of the problem, and a history of success with Keep America Beautiful, the bottling industry came up with a new scheme for offloading their waste onto the public: recycling. With recycling, unlike the returnable glass bottles of earlier times, there was “no deposit, no return” (that was an actual marketing slogan). Instead, the bottlers successfully convinced the public, and local governments, that there is a social responsibility to recycle; to clean up the externalities of big corporations -and that the public was responsible for it. Another very successful propaganda coup!
This trend has continued with the development of PET plastics and the claim of 100% recyclability. All that is required, according to the industry, is that consumers recycle those bottles and “send every bottle back”. More propaganda covering up industry externalities and laying the responsibility at the feet of consumers.
But here’s the thing: Most of the plastic that you faithfully put into your curbside recycling bin is not recycled -much less made into new plastic bottles. As stated above, less than 10% of plastics are recycled and even PET bottles (the ones with the triangle and number 1), which are the most recyclable, have an abysmal recycling rate of 27% and falling in the US. And, because virgin plastic is so cheap, and producing it so profitable, and because plastic is never infinitely recyclable (despite industry claims), the vast majority of new plastic products are made of virgin plastic. And most of what goes into your recycling bin ends up in the landfill, or is incinerated because there is no market for it; much of what is actually recycled is “downcycled” into fibers and other products that are not themselves recyclable, or, is “recycled” for use in the production of high-temperature industrial processes like cement manufacture -which means that they are actually burned: used as fuel to create heat. Additionally, because there is no post-consumer market for many types of plastic (those labeled 3 to 6), ‘recycled’ plastics are frequently shipped from wealthy countries to poor countries where they become landfill, scavenger fodder, or just pollution.
Recycling is corporate propaganda
Plastic recycling is a lie! And the industry refuses to participate in any real solutions: they refuse to accept bottle deposits, which are the only way to assure recycling; they refuse to find ways to reduce plastics use. What they offer is propaganda in the form of greenwashing, mostly meaningless recycling deceptions, and a deliberate and sustained effort to deceive and obfuscate, and to discredit independent scientific studies. A fire hose of propaganda is propagated by fossil fuel companies, bottling companies, retail and fast food companies, and by industry associations. Meanwhile, they continue to reap huge profits from their commodification of the Earth while offloading their externalities onto society. Sound familiar?
What can we do to stop them?
Plastics are useful and important, but they are not appropriate for all applications, particularly not for single use packaging, and their externalities need to be accounted for and internalized as business costs. Environmental and health impacts need to be compensated and remediated by those responsible. The problem is that Capital demands the highest possible returns, and some capitalists are willing to do anything, regardless of legality or social/environmental impact, to deliver those returns. A healthy future for life on this Earth depends on changing the calculus.
Changing the calculus involves consumer activism, environmental activism, and political activism. That is what we are here for, and there is much you can do:
- Don’t buy bottled water -carry a refillable bottle instead.
- Try not to buy food items packaged in plastic. It is challenging, but with work it is possible to reduce your plastic waste.
- Don’t use plastic bags, take re-usable cloth produce bags to the grocery store and store food at home in glass containers.
- Keep recycling. Dispose of plastics responsibly, either in recycling bins or in the trash so that they don’t end up in waterways. Particularly plastic bottles and jugs made from #1 and #2 plastic, because those products actually have market demands.
- Lobby your local government to adopt single-use plastics bans.
- Work to elect politicians who support regulation of plastics and the plastics industry.
- Volunteer your time and money to one of the many non-profit organizations working to clean up plastics, lobby politicians, sue polluters, develop and promote plastics alternatives, educate the public, and fight plastic industry propaganda.
- List other opportunities and ideas in the comments!
If you have taken the time to get to the end of this diary, I hope that your eyes have been opened and that you are inspired to take action. We are at a critical juncture where there is a narrow window of opportunity to forestall a real plastics catastrophe.
Taking Action
Fortunately there are now many activists and non-profit organizations addressing the plastics issue, and many places that you can contribute your time and resources. Let me suggest three that I have personal connections to:
Waterkeeper Alliance: the majority of plastic waste that enters the oceans enters through inland rivers and streams. Waterkeeper Alliance is an umbrella organization for waterkeeper groups across the globe, protecting inland waterways. They frequently sponsor cleanup days and have other ongoing efforts to protect rivers and streams from pollution. Find your local waterkeeper group and volunteer!
Beyond Plastics: the grandmother of plastics non-profits that does great work educating and providing real alternatives to plastics -alternatives such as programs to install municipal filtered water filling stations. This is an organization well worth your support.
The Last Beach Cleanup: a small non-profit that specializes in engineering analysis and filing lawsuits (and winning!) against the corporate perpetrators of recycling scams. A great source of authoritative information on plastic waste.
Finally, I believe that you need to fight fire with fire extinguishers, and occasionally by setting a back burn. I have been working on a project, that will work in conjunction with anti-plastics activism, to go after industry propaganda and weed out the lies and deception. I am in the early phases of this project and it is a work in progress. If you would like a peek at what I am doing, you can take a look at www.thePlasticsLie.net
Written for the Daily Kos Anti-Capitalist Meetup