waste shipped by the boatload from across
the world. And we saw how the consequences
of the broken plastics economy spill over into
waste dumps, container dockyards, private
homes, and out into the ocean.FOR HALF A CENTURY,
plastics have seen rocketing
growth, for good reason:
They are cheap, lightweight,
and virtually indestructible.
“There’s a great future in plastics,” a nervous
young Benjamin Braddock (played by Dustin
Hoffman) is told by a would-be mentor in
the 1967 movie The Graduate. Acting on that
tip would have yielded spectacular returns.
Global production soared from 25 million
tons a year in 1970 to more than 400 million
tons in 2018.
Behind this polyethylene deluge is an
economic colossus: a global plastics market
worth about $1 trillion last year, according to
U.K. data analysts the Business Research Co.
Demand for plastics has doubled since 2000
and could double again by 2050. “We have
a growing middle class around the worldthat needs to improve their quality of life,”
says Keith Christman, managing director of
plastic markets for the American Chemistry
Council, an industry organization whose
members include major producers like Dow,
DuPont, Chevron, and Exxon Mobil. “Plastic
is a part of that.” You can find plastic not just
in your water bottles and sandwich bags, but
in sweatshirts and wet wipes, home insula-
tion and siding, chewing gum, tea bags, and
countless other items.
Concerns about plastic have often been
eclipsed by debates over carbon dioxide
emissions. But the two are closely interlinked,
with plastic production emitting considerable
greenhouse gases itself. Now the world has
fully awakened to the plastics crisis. Images
of turtles choking on drinking straws or
dead whales with stomachs engorged with
plastic junk have gone viral—signifiers of the
8 million tons of plastic disgorged into oceans
every year. (The UN Environment Program
estimates that by 2050, the oceans will con-
tain more plastic than fish.) The human tollEND OF THE LINE
Shahid Ali (right)
and a coworker at
BioGreen Frontier,
one of scores of
recycling factories
that popped up
in Malaysia after
China banned
most plastic waste.Estimated number
of U.S. short tons
of virgin plastic
produced in 2018
SOURCE: UC–SANTA
BARBARA BREN SCHOOL
OF ENVIRONMENTAL
SCIENCE & MANAGEMENT500
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