Plastics industry heats world 4 times as much as air travel, report finds
▻https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/4601309-plastics-industry-heats-world-four-times-as-much-as-air-travel-repo
The industry releases about four times as many planet-warming chemicals as the airline industry, according to the paper from scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
[...] And if plastic production remains constant, by 2050 it could burn through nearly a fifth of the Earth’s remaining carbon budget — the amount of carbon dioxide climate scientists believe can be burned without tipping the climate into unsafe territory.
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The researchers found that more than 75 percent of the greenhouse gases generated by plastics are released in the steps before plastics compounds are assembled — as petroleum products are extracted, refined and converted into monomers, the building blocks of common polymers such as polyethylene or polyvinyl chloride.