Synthetic plastic was found to leach chemicals harmful to humans and other species.įor example, BPA, is a basic building block of common polycarbonate plastics used in bottled water and food packaging. In addition to aesthetics and overfull landfills, another concern surfacing was that of toxic pollution. Biodegradable plastic is meant to mitigate this problem. The rest ended up in landfills, along roadsides, in lakes and the oceans. In 2005, the US Environmental Protection Agency reported that only 5.7% of the nearly four and a half million tons of synthetic plastics discarded in the US was recovered and recycled. It is unclear how much difference biodegradable plastic has made ecologically. Īccordingly, this definition embraces those biodegradable plastics made from oil in the same way as conventional plastics but that can be broken down by bacteria, the process releasing the toxins along the way.

The petrochemical industry campaign contributions to Congressmen quadrupled in 2012 as a key player in the industry rallied support to defeat Barack Obama, perceived as “the most dangerous man in America” for his perceived sensibilities in environmental protection. The petrochemical industry in the United States has no requirements for reporting what raw materials it uses. Since the advent of biodegradable plastics, has the difference been measurable? How much oil and gas is still devoted today to the manufacture of plastic?Ī current search yields only the following comment from the US Energy Information Administration:īecause the petrochemical industry has a high degree of flexibility in the feedstock it consumes and because EIA does not collect detailed data on this aspect of industrial consumption, it is not possible for EIA to identify the actual amounts and origin of the materials used as inputs by industry to manufacture plastics. In 2009, approximately 10% of the oil and gas the United States produced and imported was used to make synthetic plastics, and the market was expected to grow at a rate of up to 15% per year.Ī positive effect of biodegradable plastic is ostensibly reducing the use of fossil fuels and the commensurate greenhouse effect. Before biodegradables were discovered, plastics were made primarily from petroleum byproducts.

Decompose definition