15 of the 16 applications a plastic product incurs fewer greenhouse gas emissions than their alternatives

 See Notable & Quotable: Plastics from The WSJ.

"Ronald Bailey writing in the August/September issue of Reason:

“Plastics are the new coal,” declares Beyond Plastics. . . . The Natural Resources Defense Council says “reducing plastic production is critical to combatting climate change.”

Producing plastics from fossil fuels emits a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, which contributes to warming the planet. An April study by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory estimates that in 2019 “global production of primary plastics generated about 2.24 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent,” which represents 5.3 percent of total global greenhouse gas emissions. So switching to plastic alternatives would help slow man-made global warming, right?

Not so fast, says a new study in Environmental Science & Technology, which finds that “replacing plastics with alternatives is worse for greenhouse gas emissions in most cases.” The European researchers report that in “15 of the 16 applications a plastic product incurs fewer greenhouse gas emissions than their alternatives.”"