The Plastics & Climate Project

Citations

 

Below are citations for information presented elsewhere on this website.

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[1] Because more than 99% of plastics are made from and produced using energy derived from fossil fuels, plastics are implicated as a significant and growing contributor to global climate change. Plastics were responsible for 1.7 gigatons (Gt) of CO2 equivalent (CO2 e) in 2015, a number that is expected to grow to 3.5 Gt by 2050 if we continue producing plastics as we do today. Making plastics emissions transparent, Coalition for Materials Emissions Transparency (COMET)

[2] Zhu (2021) The plastics cycle - an unknown branch of the carbon cycle; Stubbins et al. (2021) Plastics in the Earth System; Loiselle and Galgani (2020) Plastic pollution impacts on marine carbon geochemistry; Sharma et al. (2023) Contribution of plastic and microplastic to global climate change and their conjoining impacts on the environment; Shen et al. (2023) Recent advances in the research on effects of micro/nanoplastics on carbon conversion and carbon cycle: a review 

[3] Reyna-Bensusan et al. (2019) Experimental measurements of black carbon emission factors to estimate the global impact of uncontrolled burning of waste

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[4] A Poison Like No Other - How Microplastics Corrupted Our Planet & Our Bodies says that if the plastics industry were a country, it would be the fifth largest emitter after China, the U.S. India and Russia. According to National Geographic and The Global Carbon Atlas, the plastics would be the fourth largest.

 

[5] Beyond Plastics (2021). The New Coal: Plastics & Climate Change

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[6] Shen et al. (2020). Can microplastics pose a threat to ocean carbon sequestration?

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[7] Maity and Pramanick (2020). Perspectives and challenges of micro/nanoplastics-induced toxicity with special reference to phytotoxicity

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[8] Brahney et al. (2020). Plastic rain in protected areas of the United States

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[9] CIEL (2019). Plastic & Health - The Hidden Cost of a Plastic Planet