How Fracking Drives The Proliferation of Plastics & Ocean Pollution, Acidification

Fracking operation in Colorado and a seal pup partially strangled by plastics.

   Humans produce roughly our own weight in plastics each year. How much actually ends up in the oceans is still a matter of debate but scientists in one study have estimated between 4.8 and 12.7  million metric tonnes (in 2010 alone).   Three- fourths of the plastic waste on Earth comes from uncollected litter,  the  leaked from assorted dump sites over the years.  Most of the drastic increase between 1950  and 2015  has been documented in the Journal  Science Advances, i.e.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/318567844_Production_use_and_fate_of_all_plastics_ever_made

We're now much more aware of how the fracking process is powering a dangerous plastics bonanza,  with the plastics and fracking industries working hand-in-hand to prop up their respective pollution models.   Basically, the fracking industry requires a new source  for yearly demand to sop up its excess gas.  This is to justify more drilling while the plastics industry needs a new source of  low -cost ethane, a fracking byproduct used to manufacture plastics.  As I showed in a previous post, much of this  plastic refuse ends up in our oceans threatening sea life as well as humans - both  ingesting vastly more micro-plastics than ever before.

Apart from that micro-plastics impact, bear in mind  the role of the industrial plants that convert natural gas into petrochemicals emit massive amounts of air and climate pollutants - including carbon dioxide (CO2).  When rising levels of the gas are absorbed in the oceans it exacerbates ocean acidification, i.e. based on the chemical reaction:  CO2  +  H2O ->   H2CO 3

Where H2CO3 is carbonic acid.

How was this produced?  Well, the rapid expansion of fracking created a natural gas glut that drove actual gas prices to the lowest levels in decades.  The plastics industry then rode to the rescue of the gas frackers.  According to Plastics News: "Fracking represents a once -in -a generation opportunity for the plastics industry".   At the same time, a renewed push for plastics manufacturing provides the frackers with a polluting partner to absorb the ever increasing quantity of fracked gas (e.g. methane, much of which is already allowed to be burned off in situ, thanks to altered regulations by the Trumpites.)

It's no surprise then that Wall Street's greedy investors are lining up to build new factories that transform fracking byproducts into plastics. They see more profits pouring in - to pad their bottom lines- but are blind to the toxins pumped out to defile the environment and ruin public health. So now, not only is fracking polluting our air, soil and water, it's also directly affecting the oceans - which harbor the greatest oxygen source on the planet in the form of plankton.

Let's also process  - from the industry's own projections  -   that the global plastics industry is expected to increase production by 40 percent over the next decade.  This is driven by dropping prices for fracking byproducts as well as massively scaled -up production.   This is given that most of the  industry manufactures packaging materials that are immediately discarded.

For perspective, each human on average (globally) disposes of 110 pounds of plastic annually. Process that! It's the weight of a small frame woman.  Much of this ends up in the oceans where it strangles the resident sea life (like sea lions) or ends up accumulating in their stomachs causing them to die of starvation.

Since 1950, the  plastics industry - which had its major shout out in the 1967 film 'The Graduate' ("One word for you, Ben: Plastics!") -   has produced 18.3 trillion pounds of plastics, of which only about 9 percent has been recycled.   That translates into 16 trillion pounds tossed into landfills of which a significant proportion  (30 %) ends up in the oceans.

Less  well known:  Plastic products are inherently toxic and can become a vehicle for other pollutants. Many plastics contain hazardous chemicals and thousands of different additives, which can leach out as the plastic ages.  Such additives can comprise up to half of the object's  weight and be extremely toxic - including endocrine disrupters which affect hormone function.

Once created,  plastics can last for hundreds to thousands of years and the toxic remains of plastics pose serious challenges.   Meanwhile, the microplastics are ubiquitous, finding their way into the food we eat, soil and air we breath. Even indoor air can have high concentrations of microplastics from household products and synthetic textiles. 

We are basically awash in plastics, microplastics even as the fracking industry is making the situation much worse.

Let us also dispel (for the last time)  the cockeyed notion that natural gas is a "clean" fuel source. While it might be "clean" relative to the tar sands oil from the Keystone pipeline, it's not in any way clean standing on its own.  It is another fossil fuel - cheap but still dirty  -  and if you doubt it ask the homeowners who have frack wells near their homes in the Colorado suburbs.  See, for example, this item which greeted us in today's news paper:


The conclusion is self-evident: Rather than investing in fossil fuels and their ancillary chemical industry we need to invest more in renewable energy, including solar, geothermal, wind.