Abstract
In the global economy, plastics have become a ubiquitous material, as have the environmental impact and waste that accompany them. This article examines causes of unsustainable production activities and potential cost-effective solutions in the U.S. plastics industry. This paper estimates that approximately 3.5 % of the total U.S. environmental impact is due to plastics, measured as a weighted composite of twelve types of environmental impact. It further discusses five potential solutions to reduce these impacts: increasing product life expectancy, improving the repairability of products, increasing the use of recycling and bioplastics, and improving manufacturing efficiency. Several potential needs were identified for increasing the sustainability of plastics: the ability to differentiate product brands and models by life-expectancy, ability to differentiate product brands and models by repairability, the aggregation of plastic streams to increase recycling volume, standards for separating plastics, and the ability to differentiate products by recyclability. Bioplastics are associated with different types of environmental impact than traditional plastic and are generally considered to be less severe (environmental) impacts; however, their cost is higher, leaving a need for cost reduction efforts. For traditional plastic resin production, efficiency improvements in energy management were identified as having an average per establishment net present value of $0.92 million for a 10-year study period and for the use of plastics the net present value was $0.67 million, suggesting that there are opportunities for cost-effectively reducing their environmental impact by improving energy management.
