Greenhouse Gases are an Inventory Management Problem
Last week, industrial ecologist Roland Geyer published a great report on the production, use and fate of plastics. Let’s hope his work helps policymakers pursue better strategies for regulating plastics production. After all, putting a real number on a problem better engages people’s attention and positions. Why else does fake news, debunked documentaries, and statistically irrelevant studies rely on them so heavily?
As a biochemist and materials engineer, I am exhausted and frustrated with the often aggressive, misinformed and polarizing perspectives surrounding climate change today. As such, my hope here is to provide a perspective to help unify the spectrum of opinions and concerns out there for everyone.
While the use of more biodegradable or renewable-based plastics is good, better understanding and controlling the rate at which plastics degrade is better. Understanding the rate at which different plastics degrade is crucial to using them in a responsible manner. All plastics will in fact breakdown in various combinations of the five major greenhouse gases: water, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone. Greenhouse gases like chlorofluorocarbons and hydrofluorocarbons are not formed from natural biodegradation processes. “Biodegradable” plastics simply have much shorter degradation periods of time — usually less than 10 years. They also convert to the aforementioned gases with less energy and time.
Our current situation is quite the opposite. Plastic degradation is happening too slowly. According to Geyer’s estimate, of the 6.3 billion tons of plastic waste we have produced, only 9% was recycled while 12 % was incinerated converting it into greenhouse gases. The other 79% is sitting and accumulating in landfills and the natural environment. This 79% is costing us in the forms of creating and maintaining landfills, repairing damaged land & water infrastructure and treating medical ailments such as endocrine disruption.
On the other hand, if we replace traditional plastics with biodegradable plastics in consumer products without a sound strategy for recapturing an equal amount of released gases, we risk releasing even larger quantities of greenhouse gases into our current atmosphere and faster. Not having a recapture strategy puts us at risk of speeding up global warming and climate change.
The reality of our situation is that while greenhouse gases are invisible to the human eye, they are physical substances we can measure and track. In other words, a form of inventory we have to deal with. Our real problem is the global community’s lack of an effective inventory management plan for dealing with greenhouse gases. As in business, the more inventory you have and the longer you wait to move it, the worse the cost and management of it becomes. Learning how to maintain and manage that inventory can be profitable when properly balanced.
Continuing with this analogy, if you have no inventory (greenhouse gases), you have no business. You will lose money and business when there’s a demand for it (life on Earth). You can’t rid the world of greenhouse gases altogether. They serve and generate vital products critical to life on Earth. Without them, you can’t have plants. Plant life depends on carbon dioxide and water, two of the five main greenhouse gases. Plants are also the best generators of oxygen. Without them, most living organisms would die off without oxygen. The only exceptions would be certain types of bacteria that can live without oxygen, but even they need other greenhouse gases to survive.
Also, without oxygen, you can’t create ozone (another greenhouse gas). Ozone comes from the absorption of UV light, which is converted into energy that cleaves atomic oxygen (O2) into two individual oxygen atoms with highly reactive electron radicals. These highly reactive radical oxygen atoms immediately react with two other nearby molecules of atomic oxygen (O2) to form ozone (O3). The process is referred to as the Chapman cycle and plays a critical role in diminishing significant amounts of UV light from reaching us and the Earth’s surface. This is why the ozone layer is important.
Having too much inventory, increases your cost to maintain it. The cost of maintaining physical inventory is high for businesses. These costs usually include heating and cooling costs, storage, and disposal costs. In the greenhouse gas inventory case, we’re having to heat and cool our homes and workplaces more than ever. Storage and disposal costs are taking the form of running and maintaining waste facilities like incinerators and garbage dumps. The costs of properly maintaining the inventory was mentioned earlier and spans a wide range of costs including: real estate (creating and maintaining landfills), operations (repairing damaged land & water infrastructure) and health (treating medical ailments such as endocrine disruption.)
We currently have a large inventory of greenhouse gases and we’re continuing to make large contributions to it. As Geyer’s report shows in just plastic waste alone, we’ve produced 6.3 billion tons as of 2015. If our current rate of plastics production continues, that inventory will balloon up to around 12 billion by 2050. Knowing how costly our current inventory is, to what degree it’s costing us to maintain it, and the additional problems the inventory is causing is what people and policymakers are fervently hung up over. That said, primarily focusing on punishing companies for adding to the current inventory (carbon emission taxes) shouldn’t be our core focus. Taxing isn’t going to remove our massive inventory of greenhouse gases, it will only slow the addition of more inventory…if everybody plays along. However, the key benefit behind taxing seems to be for generating a funding source for incentivizing future inventory maintenance innovations.
Replacing all our current plastics with biodegradable ones isn’t going to remove our current inventory either. It’s only going to increase the inventory faster. We need to focus on getting the inventory we have out of the atmosphere. The oldest & easiest method (though more spatially consuming) is to grow more plant life, especially plants with a high carbon dioxide conversion turnover. Finding better and cost effective ways of converting greenhouse gases into useful existing commodity materials (i.e. polyester- and polypropylene-based) should be one of the primary focuses. This is exactly what companies like Novomer and Opus12 are doing.
Our long term play should be finding profitable modes of regulation and control of the incoming and outgoing inventory of greenhouse gases. The ideal approach is to produce materials that can recapture the exact quantities of greenhouses gases produced when the materials were created. For instance, the mining of concrete makes its one of the largest contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. Calera and Solidia Technologies are attempting to change this by creating new forms of concrete that directly absorb the carbon dioxide out of the air during its settling and solidification. Now, that’s moving towards truly sustainable materials!
Regardless of the Paris Climate Accord outcome, we’re living in an incredibly rare moment in global history where both governments and businesses are starting to work together. But again, it won’t be meaningful and practical until these groups truly focus on creating profitable modes of regulation and control of the incoming and outgoing inventory of greenhouse gases. Detractors can try to slow that down, however continued growth in the scale of the globe’s commitment and a profitable market opportunity only ensures the detractors will eventually lose market influence and profitability.
What do you think will be the most effective way of managing our inventory of greenhouse gases? Do you agree with the inventory management perspective? Your feedback on the article is greatly appreciated.
If you enjoy coverage and insights into new, advanced, and/or sustainable materials, be sure to follow me here on Medium, Twitter, or LinkedIn. On a side note, I owe a shout out to thank Richard Ybarra for his impromptu editorial critique and contributions to this creation of this article.
