With the inaugural Los Angeles Climate Week wrapped up and the annual Climate Week NYC happening this week, we thought this would be a great time to remind everyone about an oft-overlooked truth: Solving the climate crisis requires a massive reduction in plastic production and the elimination of needless single-use plastics.
The Greenhouse Gas Connection
Plastic is made from crude oil and natural gas. Not only are fossil fuels by far the largest contributor to global climate change, accounting for more than 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90% of all carbon dioxide emissions, but the process of extracting these fuels and creating plastic products from them emits more greenhouse gasses than almost all countries in the world. In fact, if the plastic industry was a country, it would be the world’s fifth largest greenhouse gas emitter.
After being used – sometimes only once – all this plastic ends up in landfills, incinerated, or directly into the environment. As plastic deteriorates, it releases methane and ethylene, drastically worsening climate change impacts and increasingly poisoning our water, air, food, and bodies with microplastics.
The Policy Solutions
The good news is, the solution is simple: Make less plastic. Of course, that will require fossil fuel corporations and other companies that profit off plastic to cut back on production – and that will likely require new laws, policies, and international agreements such as the federal Plastic Pellet Free Waters Act, the Biden-Harris administration’s Mobilizing Federal Action on Plastic Pollution: Progress, Principles, and Priorities, and the Global Plastics Treaty.
Making change on the national and international level isn’t easy, but in Surfrider’s 40 years of advocating for our ocean, waves, and beaches, local successes scale up to larger ones. As more cities pass laws banning single-use plastics and implementing reuse practices, achieving the same goals at the state level becomes reasonable. As more states embrace legislation to reduce plastic pollution, we move closer to national success.
The Personal Solutions
While a single individual may not be able to slow climate change and eliminate single-use plastics, we each can do our best to wield the influence we have and live a life that reflects our values. We can take action by contacting our representatives, informing them of our concerns, telling them the action we’d like them to take, and inviting them to a beach cleanup to see our efforts firsthand. We can resist the urge to overconsume and put in the effort to make the most sustainable purchases whenever possible.
Make Every Week ‘Climate Week'!
- Take action!
- Make sure you’re an active Surfrider member.
- Know who’s representing you in Congress and contact their local office to ask what they’re doing about climate change and plastic pollution.
- Volunteer!
- Amplify Surfrider’s efforts via social media.
- Reevaluate your relationship to stuff.
New York Climate Week
And for those attending Climate Week in New York, please stop by and say hello at these Surfrider events:
- Friday, Sept. 27 – Climate Action with Surfrider and Friends of the Ocean - Stories from Puerto Rico, New York, and Beyond
- Saturday, Sept. 28 – Resilience Rising at Rockaways: Dune Restoration with RISE and Surfrider for Climate Week NYC
In Case You Missed It...
On Monday, Surfrider, along with Heal the Bay, Sierra Club, and San Francisco Baykeeper, filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil in San Francisco Superior Court alleging that Exxon covered up the truth about the dangers of the single-use plastics it produces and knowingly caused the public to believe that single-use plastics can be safely disposed of, despite knowing otherwise, thereby directly contributing to the plastic-pollution crisis. We are now asking the court to hold Exxon accountable!