Why supply-side policy could be key to tackling the plastics crisis

The global plastic and pollution crisis is intimately tied to climate breakdown and the extraction of fossil fuels. The ongoing negotiations over a global plastic treaty show why supply-side policy is urgently needed to address the root of this dual crisis in fossil fuels, argues Joachim Peter Tilsted.

Last month, the latest round of the global negotiations for a treaty to end plastic pollution took place in Ottawa, Canada. The aim of the negotiations, set to be finalized by the end of the year, is to ‘end plastic pollution’ by ‘addressing the full life cycle of plastics.’ Because of the overwhelming human and environmental health impacts of plastics and because of the ambition to address the full impacts including in the production, transportation, and recycling of plastics, these negotiations have been called the most important development in global environmental governance since the Paris Agreement of 2015. But as the negotiations are unfolding, fossil fuel interests are doing their utmost to limit the scope of the plastics treaty

The link to the Paris Agreement is not only symbolic. Plastics, in all their varieties (including everything from packaging over tires to textiles), are almost exclusively made from fossil fuels (more than 99%). In enormously energy-intensive processes, the production of plastics involves ‘cracking’ fossil fuels at immense temperatures in large integrated petrochemical facilities, resulting in significant amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. Therefore, plastic is not only a waste and ocean pollution problem. It is also very much a climate concern.

Today, there is more plastic in the world than the weight of all living humans and animals combined. However, the OECD projects that in the absence of action—in a so-called ‘business-as-usual’ scenario—the production of plastics could still almost triple by 2060. Such growth would be detrimental. In a recent report, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates that the production of plastics, if unconstrained, can result in 106–126.6 gigaton of greenhouse gas emissions between 2019 and 2050. Such amounts of emissions correspond to around one-fourth of the remaining greenhouse gas emissions emission budget for a 50% chance of keeping warming to 1.5 °C.* So even though plastic is not high on the climate agenda, in the absence of ambitious and progressive policy, it will be a significant contributor to climate catastrophe.

In the context of the plastic negotiations, civil society actors, plastic researchers, and a range of countries have called for limits on primary plastic production. But because plastics are made from fossil fuels, and because synthetic materials constitute a strong growth segment for the fossil fuel industry, oil and gas extractors seek to ensure that such limits are kept out of the treaty text.

If limits to production are not implemented—and judging from the negotiation process thus far, this is unlikely—supply-side policy to cut fossil fuel production at source could be a crucial supplement to a global plastics treaty. Limiting fossil fuel extraction also means limiting the growth of plastic production. By restricting fossil fuel extraction in line with global temperature goals and planning for their phase-out, supply-side policies at national, regional and international levels, such as a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, could help not only limit climate catastrophe but also effectively limit the continuing proliferation of plastic pollution.

Fossil fuels and plastics are deeply intertwined both organizationally, institutionally, and technologically, and these ties have been built and strengthened over the last century. The link between climate and plastics therefore goes beyond the direct impacts and to the heart of the global energy system. This much-overlooked link—critical to the world’s socio-ecological crises—has its common root in the fossil energy regime. By addressing this root directly, fossil fuel supply-side policy can play a key part in tackling the plastics crisis.

By Joachim Peter Tilsted, PhD Student in Environmental and Energy System Studies at Lund University.