You Can’t Handle The Truth About Plastics In Your Life – CleanTechnica

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The newest Taylor Sheridan series is The Landman. Billy Bob Thornton plays a field executive for a mid-sized oil company in West Texas. Protagonist Tommy describes the oil industry as a complicated, problematic, filthy, dangerous, and necessary business that feeds most of our lifestyles. He lectures about how much we depend on oil and its various byproducts everyday — including a whole slew of plastic-based items. The truth about plastics isn’t quite that black-and-white.

In fact, it’s as if the International Association of Oil and Gas Producers paid for the show to be aired.

Thornton’s soapbox diatribe in Landman’s season one, episode three has become fodder for a whole lotta social media posts. Climate deniers are defensding burning fossil fuels and expressing disbelief that viable renewable energy alternatives actually exist. As example, one self-proclaimed proud MAGA supporter posted on X that Tommy’s worldview tells it like it is, and everyone should tune in, “especially those that have bought into the climate scam and clean energy.”

While the pop culture debate about fossil fuels vs. renewables continues on social media, a Kansas county has sued a group of nearly a dozen companies, including energy giants ExxonMobil and Chevron, accusing them of “false representations” to the public regarding the recyclability of plastics. The lawsuit says that some of the largest oil and gas companies are among the 20 petrochemical companies responsible for more than half of all single-use plastics generated globally.

“Despite their long-standing knowledge that recycling plastic is neither technically nor economically viable, petrochemical companies — independently and through their industry trade associations and front groups — have engaged in fraudulent marketing and public education campaigns designed to mislead the public about the viability of plastic recycling as a solution to plastic waste.”

Then there’s Carrboro, North Carolina, which filed a lawsuit on Wednesday accusing Duke Energy, one of the nation’s largest utility companies, of deceiving the public about climate change and contributing to the warming of the planet. Allegations that energy companies covered up what they knew about climate change and misled the public have formed the basis of more than two dozen lawsuits by state and local governments across the US since 2017.

Plastics and climate change go hand-in-hand.

The truth about plastics is perverse. They have infiltrated every part of the environment and human life cycle. Plastics can break down into microplastics in the environment, potentially contaminating drinking water and soil. Scientific research tells us that these microplastics reside in human blood, organs, breast milk, and even in fetuses before they’re born. Plastics generate huge and ever-growing amounts of carbon emissions. They are filling up our oceans, choking marine ecosystems, and infiltrating the lives of coastal communities who rely on marine habitats.

The most disheartening truth about plastics is that they don’t disintegrate, like other manufactured materials that we have come to accept as part of our daily lives. Every piece of plastic that has ever been produced still exists in our environment today. The world produces nearly a half-billion tons of plastic each year, more than twice the amount produced two decades ago.

Negotiations about Plastics End in Stalemate — and That May Be Good for the Environment

The Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) outlines how, although the final session of recent talks on a legally-binding and universal plastics treaty (INC-5) ended in South Korea without resolution, the inability to settle may be a good thing.

The EJF explains that the decision to extend negotiations to another Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee on Plastic Pollution (INC-5.2) is not ideal, but it is necessary.

Why? It avoids a premature compromise that would have failed to address the scope and scale of the plastic crisis. This is one of the most pressing issues of our time, and while the lack of urgency is concerning, says EJF, the current weak state of the treaty necessitated these extended negotiations. Over the week of talks, fossil fuel and petrochemical interests worked to limit the treaty through efforts to omit production reduction and chemicals, despite calls from over 100 countries for measures to limit plastic production.

The obstructionist tactics of petrochemical interests and like-minded states — plus a lack of inclusivity — have muddied the treaty process, argues EJF.  No observers from critical discussions, including the Indigenous peoples’ caucus and waste pickers.

And then there’s the proposed negotiating framework for INC-5.2; it, too, has shortcomings, according to EJF:

•  a failure to tackle the full lifecycle of plastics;
• the absence of an article on hazardous chemicals of concern;
• inadequate language around the development of non-toxic reuse, refill, and repair systems; and,
• a weak lifecycle approach to addressing fishing and aquaculture gear

As the environmental toll has grown, so has scrutiny of the plastic industry’s messaging. The attorney general of California has sued Exxon Mobil, alleging that the oil giant carried out a “decades-long campaign of deception” that overhyped the promise of recycling and spawned a plastic pollution crisis. The lawsuit argues that people are more likely to buy single-use plastics because of a false belief, promoted by Exxon Mobil, that they would be recycled. AG Rob Bonta says the company is a leading producer of a key component used to make single-use plastics. Estimated damages could amount to “multiple billions of dollars.”

Meanwhile, Microplastics May Be Influencing Atmospheric Conditions

Clouds form when the invisible water vapor in the air condenses into visible water droplets or ice crystals. For this to happen, says the National Weather Service, the parcel of air must be saturated — it is unable to hold all the water it contains in vapor form, so it starts to condense into a liquid or solid form.

A November 2024 study confirms that, because of their atmospheric concentrations, microplastics may act as ice nucleating particles in the atmosphere. The researchers studied how different types of particles form ice when they come into contact with liquid water. This process, which occurs constantly in the atmosphere, is called nucleation. In other words, microplastic particles can have the same effect as when particles stick to water vapor, producing ice crystals at temperatures 5 to 10 degrees Celsius (9 to 18 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than droplets without microplastics.

To come up with these findings, researchers used droplet freezing assays and investigated the immersion freezing activity of lab-prepared microplastics of four different compositions:

1. low density polyethylene (LDPE);
2. polypropylene (PP);
3. poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC); and,
4. poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET).

The microplastics were also exposed to ultraviolet light, ozone, sulfuric acid, and ammonium sulfate to mimic environmental aging of the plastics. The reasoning behind these exposures was to make clear the role that these processes play in the ice nucleating activity of microplastics.

Results showed that all studied microplastics act as immersion nuclei, and aging processes can modify this ice nucleating activity. As a result, this led to decreases in ice nucleating activity for LDPE, PP, and PET. The ice nucleating activity of PVC generally increased following aging, which the authors attributed to a cleaning of chemical defects present on the surface of the stock material.

Chemical changes were monitored with infrared spectroscopy, and the growth of a peak at 1650–1800 cm–1 was associated with a decrease in ice nucleating activity. Loss of an existing peak in that region was associated with an increase in ice nucleating activity.

In essence, the studied microplastics have ice nucleating activities sufficient to be a non-negligible source of ice nucleating particles in the atmosphere if present in sufficiently high concentrations. The truth about plastics is, as if it’s not bad enough that we’re polluting land and seas, now we’re also reaching into the skies with our plastics contamination.