The COP is a failure to tackle the great climate problem – plastics

Most mornings, Yvette Arellano wonders if the plastic factory next to her home in Texas will leak poisonous fumes again. If so, she knows what to do by heart. Cover windows and doors with thick black plastic. Turn off ventilation, heating, and air conditioning. Then wait, sometimes for days, until the outside air is safe again and hope that the health impacts are not too severe.

“This is all for the production of plastics. For the straw that someone throws at the end of their drink. Or the bag of ketchup that no one uses,” the environmental justice advocate and founder of Fenceline Watch said last week on the side. . event at the COP26 climate change conference in Glasgow. “We need to keep having conversations about what it means to not only … increase recycling, but stop the production of (plastics) at all.”

People’s health is not the only thing at stake. Plastic production is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions and is growing rapidly as demand increases around the world. If nothing is done, analysts predict it will account for about 13 percent of the world’s remaining carbon budget by 2050.

Yet despite growing concern about the impact of microplastics and plastic pollution on marine life, governments and companies have avoided talking about regulating plastic production to address climate change. According to an analysis of Global Alliance for Alternatives to Incinerators (GAIA), an international coalition of environmental groups, only one country directly addressed plastics in its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC). NDCs are countries’ climate policy report cards that must be submitted to the UN under the Paris Agreement.

“Plastic is made from 99 percent fossil fuels,” GAIA spokeswoman Claire Arkin said. “(But) this barrier still exists to limit fossil fuel extraction and plastic production. We need to make it clear that countries must implement policies to limit plastic production and eliminate it completely.”

Plans in most countries to address plastic pollution have largely focused on improving waste management and recycling, increasing demand for recycled plastics, and regulating harmful single-use plastics. For example, in May, Canada listed plastic as a toxic in the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. The decision was a first step in the government’s plan to tackle plastic pollution, which will ban some single-use items and hopes to boost the market for recycled plastics.

However, Environment and Climate Change Canada’s rationale for the measure focused on environmental damage from plastic pollution, especially for marine life. The climate impact of producing and, in some cases, incinerating the material received little mention in an ECCC scientific evaluation on the subject.

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Plastic production is expanding in the country. In October, Dow Chemical, one of the world’s largest petrochemical companies, announced plans to triple the size of an existing plant in Alberta that converts natural gas into plastic. While the company claims the plant will be net zero, it will capture as much emissions as it produces using carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies, a recent GAIA report, which was not peer-reviewed, pointed to significant issues in the approach.

CCS has “repeatedly failed” to capture carbon from manufacturing in a cost-effective way, and promises of net zero typically exclude emissions from other stages of the plastics life cycle. These include the extraction and transportation of oil and gas, and greenhouse gases released by the eventual decomposition or burning of plastic waste, it notes.

Converting oil into plastics is a complex, energy-consuming process, explained Tim Grabiel, an international environmental lawyer who works with the Environmental Investigation Agency. Once crude fossil fuel enters a petrochemical facility, it is repeatedly heated and cooled to several hundred degrees Celsius before turning into plastic. That heat generally comes from burning large amounts of fossil fuels, he said.

Oil and gas companies are also turning to the material for their future growth as the world shifts away from fossil fuels in other sectors. A 2018 report from the International Energy Agency found that plastic production will account for nearly half of global demand for fossil fuels by 2050, ahead of trucks, aviation and global shipping.

Despite the impact of plastics on the climate, they are hardly ever mentioned in international climate negotiations like the COP26 meeting that ended last week in Glasgow, Scotland. Apart from the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the COPs are annual meetings of 197 countries to develop climate agreements under the watchful eye of civil society groups, academics, environmental groups and companies.

“Leaders still, when they talk about plastic pollution, they are not really looking at the full life cycle of plastic and the fact that it is polluting from extraction to disposal,” explained the Greenpeace Canada plastic campaign coordinator. Sarah King. “We talk about reduction when it comes to waste or reducing emissions, but we don’t hear much about the actual production of fossil fuel by-products like plastic.”

In fact, Grabiel noted that countries increasingly support stricter measures to control plastic after its production. Earlier this year, Rwanda and Peru co-sponsored a preliminary motion to create a global plastics treaty within the UN system. Discussions on the document are scheduled for the UN Environment Assembly meeting in February, and Grabiel said many observers hope countries will back the initial steps toward a global plastics treaty.

“Canada recognizes the important work being done by the United Nations Environment Assembly and supports the initiation of negotiations towards a new global plastics agreement,” the ECCC said in a statement.

However, Grabiel said that even the most far-reaching version of this proposed draft would only cover plastics from the moment they are transformed from oil or gas into a material. Any pollution or emissions generated before that point will not be covered, unless they are included in the countries’ NDCs or in broader regulations on fossil fuels and petrochemicals.

The federal government will “hopefully” be thinking about its recent commitments at COP26, both under the UNFCCC and other voluntary pledges, and “connect those dots,” King added.

“We need to have more conversations about how plastics in our everyday lives are contributing to climate change, and there needs to be more recognition [of that] by the government, “he said.