Fighting a losing battle to tackle growth in plastic production | Letters

Beth Gardiner is right to argue that plastic is not merely a recycling failure (‘They pushed so many lies about recycling’: the fight to stop big oil pumping billions more into plastics, 19 February). It is something far more consequential: an oil growth strategy.

Petrochemicals – of which plastics are the dominant output – now account for roughly 75% of net global oil-demand growth, and are projected to become the largest driver of future oil demand. Plastic production has already doubled in the past two decades. Major oil companies are responding accordingly. Recent consolidation – including a $60bn merger creating one of the world’s largest plastics producers – reflects a deliberate pivot toward petrochemical assets as a long-term demand anchor.

This reframes plastic entirely. It is not simply a waste problem – it is energy policy by another name. Yet regulation remains focused downstream – on litter, recycling and waste – while upstream, virgin resin capacity continues expanding. No recycling target can neutralise exponential production growth.

We would not attempt to solve coal emissions by focusing only on ash management. Plastics require the same clarity. Plastic is embedded oil and a climate risk that we cannot recycle away.
Charlotte Wintermann
REearthable, Seattle, US

I remember when my family first got a plastic bag. We carefully washed it and reused it repeatedly as a modern treasure, not that we had really ever needed such a thing.

The planet is now choking on plastic pollution, and the evil intent of fossil fuel interests using plastic as a driver to expand production is exposed in Beth Gardiner’s new book. She correctly identifies that the industry has been supply-driven. But there’s now a parallel push to convert consumers who feel guilty about single-use plastic to single-use paper and cardboard instead. Transferring the load on to the biosphere entrenches and expands the overexploitation of forests, threatening forest ecosystems, depleting forest carbon stocks and harming forest communities. Runaway plastic and paper use are both exacerbating climate change.

A big part of the solution is to abandon single-use throwaway packaging and utensils, not to swap feedstocks and carry on. Our consumption levels are out of control and unsustainable, and this is one manifestation. Disposability and convenience are driving the catastrophe these greedy industries have unleashed.
Peg Putt
Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

In its earliest form, the environmental movement in the 1970s developed the phrase “reduce, reuse, recycle”. There is a hierarchy intended. Sadly, consumers have few choices. Many grocery markets sell produce in plastic bags or boxes. Because of shipping costs, many containers that were once glass are now made of plastic. To prevent theft, small items now come sealed in unbreakable plastic coverings.

Rather than reduce plastic use, Americans turned to recycling as a way to continue consumption with less guilt. It has proven to be a sham. China stopped accepting plastic imports. Most plastics, as identified by a numbering system, have no ability to be recycled. Few plastic containers from the market can be reused multiple times. Glass storage containers my mother used in the 1960s have given way to plastic ones that are intended to be reused before being tossed into the garbage.

Consumers should not feel guilt about their inability to reduce dependence on plastic. Huge plastic production firms have promoted recycling as a panacea. It is not. Governments are too dependent on the largesse of petroleum lobbyists to consider significant regulation.

I fear that it is only a matter of time before our inability to rein in petroleum use, significantly reduce the effects of a warming planet and limit our reliance on science dooms us to an unhappy and unsustainable quality of life. Our postwar golden age is now in the toaster.
Stephen Avis
Ferndale, California, US