Five Actions For Sustainable Change

The proposal from the American Chemistry Council and America's Plastics Makers

A few months ago I wrote a position on a policy proposal from some NGOs on restricting the use of single use plastics and halting construction of new production facilities to produce plastic products. You can read the original proposal here.

Trade organizations such as the American Chemistry Council and NGOs representing the plastics industry have since come out with their own plan to solve the plastic waste problem. You can read it in full here.

In reading the plan proposed by the chemical and plastics industry versus the one proposed by environmental justice focused NGOs the spirit of what they both hope to accomplish are somewhat similar. 

Both organizations want to reduce plastic waste in the environment and enable the use of recycled plastics.

From this point the plans diverge. The environmental justice focused NGOs want to stop expansion of all plastics production, stop research and funding into other recycling techniques, and make plastics producers pay more for the waste that consumers generate by using their products and for the oil that they use to make plastics.

If plastic waste pollution was a virus then new recycling methods that are being developed could be the vaccine that could stop the spread. 

My opinion is that polymer chemists/engineers and scientists in general are best suited to developing solutions to the problems of plastic waste and repurposing that waste for something new or developing completely new materials from abundant renewable resources. This is one of the main themes that I try to write about here with some regularity. 

As a quick detour I’m going to rehash a similar issue in the early 1900s.

Alcohol Prohibition

Drinking in the late 1800s and early 1900s was a real problem in the United States and it garnered a ban or a prohibition of sale starting in 1919 through the 18th amendment. Prohibition would last until 1930 and the amendment was repealed because it didn’t really stop anyone from drinking and it ended up causing a whole bunch of organized crime. Therefore in order to stop the issues related to excessive drinking new legislation would have to be drafted including changing the drinking age and making the penalties harsh for those who violated the law. 

Enforcement of driving while under the influence of alcohol became easier with setting a legal blood alcohol limit and having a means of rapid detection—the breathalyzer. 

The Plan Presented By American Chemistry Council and Alliance to End Plastic Waste

The purpose of me drawing this parallel is that I don’t think banning plastics will work in curbing their waste in the environment because it will completely upend modern life to the point where things will become untenable by regular people. A similar thing I use to compare a ban on plastics is the call for repealing the affordable healthcare act, a law that is providing health insurance to millions of people, without having a policy to take its place after repeal. The use of plastics, single use or reusable, are too prevalent and critical to modern infrastructure to be banned or stopped. I suppose the issue with single use is more about the duration of the use as opposed to it being used once.

Plastics, engineering polymers, and composites are all being used to reduce automotive vehicle weight and extend the range of electric vehicles. Polymers are used to construct wind turbines and solar panels and the idea would be that they are used once for the lifetime of the product which are hopefully measured in decades. I see plastics and polymers becoming more important in developing national infrastructure and having the manufacturing capacity and capability in North America will be more important in the coming decades.

The proposal from the stakeholders of the plastics industry is simple and straightforward:

1. 30% recycled plastics in all plastic packaging by 2030

2. Create a modern regulatory framework for recycled plastics

3. Develop national standards for recycling

4. Do more lifecycle assessments around new and existing material uses

5. Establish a system that helps hold producers accountable

As someone who works in the industry I may have some bias towards this plan, but to me it makes a lot of sense and it calls for things that I see as being actionable and reasonable. I don’t see anyone in congress on either side of the aisle being able to argue against the proposed plan because the alternative scenarios are what exactly?

One area where I think the American Chemistry Council and the Alliance to End Plastic Waste could improve would be that they could acknowledge that previous stakeholders have done the wrong thing on these issues. 

The inability of the plastics and chemical industry to admit past errors restricts them from regaining the public trust. I attended a “leading at the speed of trust” seminar a few years ago and one thing that is taught around regaining trust is to admit when you were wrong. This inability to admit wrong doing by in the industry provides grounds for a great story by journalists and their opponents about how the industry says one thing and does something else.

The chemical and plastics industry know they need to change how they do business or they will end up getting sued by everyone (e.g. Monsanto and RoundUp). Perhaps the shortage of raw materials will cause people to scratch their heads and think about what a world would like like without the materials that they denigrate.

Here are two pictures that I love:

Source

The first is a self-made dwelling and I believe if a life cycle assessment was done it would show minimal impact on the surrounding environment, likely due to a lack of modern amenities. To me this represents one viewpoint that has merit, but likely would only appeal to a certain subset of people as a viable home. I think it looks like an awesome place to stay for a short period of time, but I wouldn’t necessarily want to live there full time.

Source

The second picture is the first home built to the living building challenge, which is considered by most to be on the cutting edge of building sustainability. To me, this home represents the best of modern architecture and sustainability existing in harmony and I would definitely want to live here full time. Additionally, it was a refurbished house that likely cost more than building a new one on the site.

Tony