The Plastics & Climate Project has helped establish helped to establish the urgent need to understand the nexus between plastic pollution and climate change. Thanks for your tireless work to bring the issue of the climate impact of plastics to the attention of the world. You've helped to bring this issue into sharp public focus - exactly where it belongs.
- Dr. Ben Santer
Why This Project Exists
Little data exist about the connections between climate change and plastics. As fossil fuels are the main feedstock for petrochemicals and 99% of plastics, plastics have climate impacts similar to other fossil-fuel based industries. However, plastics also have unique climate impacts, including while they are in use and when they become unmanaged waste.
Even many “bio” and "compostable" plastics affect the climate, but it is unclear to what extent. The degree to which all plastics contribute to climate change throughout their life cycle is unknown. We don’t know how much global temperature rise plastics cause.
In addition, a number of climate impacts from plastics are not explicitly included in climate models, accounting and reporting, or greenhouse gas emission (GHG) scenarios, including those published by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
With the growing adoption of renewable energy and electric transportation, the fossil fuel industry is rapidly expanding into plastics and petrochemicals. Production is set to double or triple in 25 years, and the climate impacts will increase, too.
Therefore, it is imperative that we understand the magnitude of plastic’s climate impacts. That is why the Plastics & Climate Project exists.
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Credit: Holly Kaufman
Key Findings
Through our research, we found that plastics—and the petrochemicals in them—are increasing global average temperature and using more of the carbon budget than currently accounted for. Even if all plastic production, use, and waste stopped today, many of plastic’s climate impacts would not only continue, but continue to grow.
The climate impacts of plastics are:
Significant - If the global plastics industry were a country, it would be the 4th or 5th largest emitter of GHGs, at 4-5% of global emissions, or about twice the amount from aviation.
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Credit: Tom Fisk, Pexels
Undercounted - That 4-5% only counts emissions from life cycle stages where combustion occurs, i.e., plastic production, and some forms of waste management such as incineration. Plastics also emit GHGs without combustion, too, owing to their physical and chemical properties. This includes while plastics are in use i.e., foam insulations continually emits fluorinated gases (“F-gases”)), while degrading as unmanaged waste, and during other life cycle stages.
Credit: Huseyn Naghiyev, Vecteezy
Growing - Owing to the current and planned expansion of the plastic and petrochemical industry, petrochemicals will account for more than ⅓ of global oil demand growth by 2030, and an additional 56 billion cubic meters of fossil gas.
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Credit: Canva Teams
Why This Matters
There are three main ways in which plastics may impact the rate and severity of global climate change:
Credit: LeBoutillier, Unsplash
Greenhouse Gas Emissions
Plastics emit multiple greenhouse gases throughout their entire, never-ending lifecycle, including from fossil fuel extraction, and plastic production, distribution, use, waste treatment and unmanaged waste. Data is lacking for some of these stages. Plastics also emit black carbon from some stages.
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Carbon Cycling
Plastics interfere with global carbon cycling, including the functioning of ocean, soil, and plant carbon sinks, while adding harmful chemicals to those environments. Micro- and nanoplastics (MNPs) are coating plants and reducing photosynthesis, which may further affect the the function of biological carbon sinks. Insufficient data exists for all sink types, though it appears that the overall trend is a warming effect.
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Credit: Matthew Cole
Credit: Roxanne Desgagnes, Unsplash
Radiation Budget
Micro- and nanoplastics (MNPs) now permeate all Earth surfaces, as well as the air, clouds, and atmosphere. These light and dark particles may be altering the exchange of energy between Earth’s surface and the atmosphere, Earth’s reflectivity, the amount of moisture in clouds, and the melt rate of glaciers. Few studies have been conducted and it is unclear whether MNP pollution is having a warming or a cooling effect.
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Plastics and petrochemicals also harm human health, especially for frontline and environmental justice communities near fossil fuel extraction and plastics manufacturing and recycling facilities.
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Notes & Citations
[1]Zhu (2021) The plastics cycle - an unknown branch of the carbon cycle; Stubbins et al. (2021) Plastics in the Earth System; Loiselle and Galgani (2020) Plastic pollution impacts on marine carbon geochemistry; Sharma et al. (2023) Contribution of plastic and microplastic to global climate change and their conjoining impacts on the environment; Shen et al. (2023) Recent advances in the research on effects of micro/nanoplastics on carbon conversion and carbon cycle: a review
[2] Plastics affect the climate due to greenhouse gas emissions throughout the plastics life cycle, and to plastic's physical and chemical properties, including shedding of micro- and nanoplastics. The only impact category accounted for now is greenhouse gas emissions, and only those from the beginning extraction and production phases, and some forms of waste management. Global production of primary plastics alone generated more than 2.7 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2023 - about 5% (up to 5.3%) of total global GHG emissions, or about double the amount from aviation. (See Climate Impact of Primary Plastic Production.) The 5% is approximate as it depends on the global GHG emissions number used (WRI or Canadian government). A 2024 study (Pottinger, et al) estimates annual increases in GHG emissions from the plastics lifecycle are projected to grow 37% by 2050 to approximately 3.35 billion tonnes CO2 equivalent.
[3] A Poison Like No Other - How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet & Our Bodies says that if the plastics industry were a country, it would be the fifth largest emitter after China, the U.S. India and Russia. According to National Geographic and The Global Carbon Atlas, the plastics industry would be the fourth largest.
[4] International Energy Agency (IEA), The Future of Petrochemicals, (2018)
[5] Reyna-Bensusan et al. (2019) Experimental measurements of black carbon emission factors to estimate the global impact of uncontrolled burning of waste.
[6] Shen et al. (2020). Can microplastics pose a threat to ocean carbon sequestration?
[7] GLOBAL PATTERNS IN MICROPLASTIC CONTAMINATION ON GLACIERS, Roberto Ambrosini, et al (2024)
[8] CIEL (2019). Plastic & Health - The Hidden Cost of a Plastic Planet