The future of plastics: why it’s time to look beyond waste to defossilization

For most of us, when we think about plastics, we think about plastic waste. But waste and littering at the end of the life of a plastic product isn’t the only environmental challenge with it. Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are another – and their root cause lies at the beginning of plastics’ life cycle, which involves the use of fossil resources.

Despite the problematic nature of plastics, they are a material with huge benefits and in some applications currently have no viable alternatives. Plastics are here to stay and their use is in fact only set to increase – a recent Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report predicts that by 2050 plastics production will be double or even triple of what it is today, potentially accounting for some 20% of global fossil oil use.

So how to make plastics more sustainable? By finding better ways to not only deal with it as a waste, but by also effectively defossilizing plastics at source. 

A Royal Society report highlights three alternatives to fossil resources currently used as raw materials in the plastics industry: biomass, plastic waste and CO₂ capture. All three can significantly contribute to reducing the greenhouse gas emissions of plastics production by using virgin fossil-free routes to make plastics. For example, polyethylene is made of ethylene molecules, which can be sourced from fossil fuels, but can also be produced from biomass or chemically recycled plastic waste.

Closing the recycling gap with fossil-free raw materials

Today, the predominant approach to plastic waste recycling is called mechanical recycling – but for many types of plastic this doesn’t work.  That’s why a lot of plastic waste isn’t actually recycled but goes to landfill or to be incinerated. What is required for many hard-to-recycle plastics is chemical recycling.

For Lorraine Ferris, Fellow at the Henry Royce Institute at the University of Manchester and contributor to the Royal Society report, chemical recycling is the route to defossilizing plastics that she gets most excited about.

“If we could divert plastic waste and use the embedded carbon to break it down into raw materials to make new chemicals, that would be a very circular solution,” she says.

But while valuable in terms of cutting down the need for fossil resources and improving the carbon footprint of plastics, recycling won’t be sufficient in providing all the carbon required to meet the rising demand for plastics.

“Even in a perfect recycling scenario, which we are very far from today, we would still need something to feed the cycle with to close the gap between the recycled carbon available and the total carbon required,” says Maiju Helin, Head of Market Development for the polymers and chemicals segment at Neste.

Renewable, i.e. “biobased”, solutions can contribute to closing that gap.

“Neste already offers more sustainable biobased alternatives to replace fossil fuel feedstock in the polymers and plastics value chains,” says Helin. This solution is available at scale and is based on sustainable biomass, such as waste and residues. “Neste is also scaling up chemical recycling solutions to increase the availability of raw material produced from plastic waste,” she adds.

Harnessing innovation for a circular and low-carbon future

Alongside biobased solutions and chemical recycling, there is also longer-term technological innovation that produces hydrocarbons to be used as a raw material for plastics from carbon captured from CO₂ , coupled with green hydrogen.

Neste is actively exploring several innovation areas, including Power-to-X technology based e-fuel solutions and value chains. Once the technology is further developed and implemented, this could go a long way towards reducing plastics’ greenhouse gas emissions too.

While promising, this technology is not yet ready to be used at scale as a replacement for fossil fuels. “To get green hydrogen, you need to set up significant electrolysis facilities,” explains Ferris. “The technology isn’t widely established yet and in the short term it might use some of the renewable energy that you might otherwise use to decarbonize society, resulting in limited net gains."

More sustainable plastics: the full picture

Once alternative methods of plastics production are further developed and more widely adopted, the future of plastics’ greenhouse gas emissions could look a lot better than the Berkeley Laboratory researchers predicted. In follow-up research, they also plan to analyze the impact of different recycling and mitigation measures, which will provide a better idea of how the future could look.

To speed up solutions for fossil fuel alternatives in the plastics industry, the lack of awareness around the growing problem of plastics’ greenhouse gas emissions needs to be addressed. At the moment, the plastic waste issue gets the lion’s share of people’s attention. “It’s something very tangible,” explains Helin. “We see plastic waste in our everyday life.”

In addition, awareness campaigns and visually impressive documentaries that capture people’s imagination, such as Sir David Attenborough’s “Blue Planet” series, often focus on the very visual problems caused by plastics in landfill or oceans.

“Maybe we need a Blue Planet moment for plastics raw materials sourcing as well as its potential to pollute the seas,” says Ferris.

It’s definitely time to increase awareness, agrees Helin. “We need to do our ultimate best as humankind to defossilize plastics to help us mitigate the effects of climate change we are already seeing today,” she concludes.

Credits: Dr. Eva Amsen, a science writer and communicator whose work has appeared on Forbes, Nautilus and The Scientist.