The war on plastics is also a war on petroleum

By Engr. Edgar Mana-ay

The petroleum industry supplies all the basic materials required to manufacture plastics that we use today – from the grocery bags to the casing of ball pens, to the fake leather in upholstery and fake Gucci bags, and tens of thousands of other consumer items that we use every day. Plastic manufacturing accounts for 5% of total oil and natural gas production in the whole world.

The feedstock or the basic building block in plastic manufacture is derived from natural gas processing and crude oil refining. These raw materials are hydrocarbon compounds such as polypropylene, polyethylene, naphtha, and butylene.

Plastic materials are here to stay for as long as civilization exists. Its advantage over other types of material alternatives is primarily cost and durability. Demand will, therefore, continue to grow despite governments all over the world clamping down on single-use plastics. As the name implies, we need to use a plastic material over and over again to drastically reduce the plastic garbage heap. Until such time that science can find reliable and cost-competitive alternatives, plastic will remain the best material for the packaging of consumer products such as electronics, food, fruit, drinks, and a host of thousands more of consumer items.

One of the strongest arguments against plastic is plastic pollution. Plastics take an awfully long time to decompose naturally (50 to 100 years on the average) and only a small amount of plastic used globally is recycled. Annually, 350 million tons of plastics enter the market around the world, and packaging use takes 45% of that volume. Maybe we can adapt what they are doing in some Russian malls where they just tie with plastic strings the purchases without providing a plastic bag. Or follow this writer who has a fancy and good-looking buri bag which I use over and over again when I purchase my groceries or do marketing in public markets.

Just like in Manila Bay, there is the Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch, the Western Garbage Patch located near Japan, and the Eastern Garbage Patch located between Hawaii and California. Both floating Garbage Patches are almost as big as Mexico. These plastics accumulate because most are not biodegradable. Because of the heat of the sun, many plastics in the ocean just break down into tinier and tinier pieces, a process called photodegradation, making the ocean water look like a cloudy soup.

By 2025, there can be one ton of plastics for every three tons of fish and marine life in the ocean. Plastic debris affects nearly 700 species of marine life worldwide through entanglement in nets and ingestion of the tiny plastic particles which alters its natural and biological processes. Sea turtles often mistake plastic bags for jellyfish, its favorite food. Albatross mistakes plastic resin pellets for fish eggs and feed them to chicks that die from starvation or ruptured organs.

Plastic ingestion by marine life introduces toxins into the food chain and eventually lands in the stomach of man. It then causes two chemical impacts: the release of its additives such as bisphenol (BPA) and toxins such as DDT and PCB’s. Plastics also transport invasive (destructive) species into the ocean. A study made in Western Atlantic showed insect eggs in 24% of the plastic pellets sampled. As plastics break down in the oceans, they sink to the ocean floor and leads to oxygen deficiency. Microplastics and plastic trash in general block sunlight from reaching plankton and algae below, stunting growth, hence threatens the entire food chain in the ocean.

China is the biggest plastic feedstock importer in the world especially polyethylene and polypropylene, half of which are used to manufacture single-use plastics such as shopping bags, food and drink packaging, drinking straws in restaurants and food chains. Whatever happens in China will affect the energy industry in Texas where they purchase almost 100 percent of their feedstock. Recently, China’s National Development and Reform Commission has released a three-stage plan to prohibit the production and sale of ultra-thin plastic bags, foam tableware, disposable plastic swabs, and production of goods containing plastic microbeads (mostly a filler in cosmetics and detergents).

By 2025 China will ban shipping services from using disposable plastic packaging while restricting the amount of plastic tape they use. Non-biodegradable plastics will be banned and restaurants must stop using plastic straws in major Chinese cities by the end of 2020 with smaller towns and cities following in 2022.

Considering China’s population of 1.4 billion, the move is likely to affect the global petrochemical industry. The implications both for virgin PE (polyethylene) polymers (the general technical name for plastics) demand in China plus the amount reduced in the campaign for recycling will be very significant for the petroleum industry in Texas since China is the largest polyethylene importer in the world.

Polyethylene is one of the most common plastics and a major product of the numerous oil refineries located on the gulf coast of Texas. The ban announced by China comes as petrochemical companies are moving to expand their capacities along the Gulf Coast to take advantage of the huge volume of cheap natural gas pouring from U.S. shale fields. If there is a world reduction in plastic use, then the US energy companies instead of converting its natural gas into materials for plastic manufacturing can now shift to power plant fuel and maybe totally eliminate coal as a fuel. Natural gas is a cleaner burning fuel than coal.

Regardless of the economic consequences for the US oil companies, the Philippines and all countries in the world should take the cue from China to REDUCE single-use plastic consumption and of course to recycle or burn our plastic garbage so it will not end up in the oceans. It is now a social fad to carry along a newly purchased bottled water, but don’t you know it is safe to drink tap water from the faucet? At home, only this writer is drinking from the faucet, the rest in my household just like most in society, prefers bottled or processed water. This habit should be changed if we want to save our oceans and marine life.