Toward a More Sustainable Plastics Economy, with Fernando Vidal

Notable quotes

• Life in plastic, not fantastic: “At the moment, the rate for plastic recycling is only about 9 percent of all the collective waste … A lot of the plastic that we use ends up being lost and contaminates the environment … The other big problem is also the greenhouse gas emissions emitted by the plastic life cycle, which also contributes to global warming. In fact, it’s estimated that the carbon footprint for the plastic economy globally is about 1.8 gigatons of carbon dioxide, which is roughly the size of the combined national emissions of Germany, the United Kingdom, and France.” (4:10)
• Four pathways to a more sustainable plastics economy: “We … propose four specific targets: basically, the reduction in plastic demand by half; the breakaway from petroleum-based plastics; and a switch to renewable plastics. We also propose to maximize recycling to over 90 percent of all holistic waste.” (6:50)
• Recommended steps toward a sustainable plastics economy: “The easier [interventions] will be implemented first, and they should be mostly in terms of bans and taxes on unnecessary and harmful plastics. In the middle term, we’ll see more of an expansion of biomass production and the expansion of extended producer responsibility schemes, … more recycling targets, and changes in design. Then, toward the longer term, we’ll see the biggest impact on the change in fossil fuel–based infrastructure, the scale-up of renewable resources overall, and worldwide implementation of waste-collection infrastructure.” (25:10)

Top of the Stack

• “Designing a Circular Carbon and Plastics Economy for a Sustainable Future” by Fernando Vidal, Eva R. van der Marel, Ryan W. F. Kerr, Caitlin McElroy, Nadia Schroeder, Celia Mitchell, Gloria Rosetto, Thomas T. D. Chen, Richard M. Bailey, Cameron Hepburn, Catherine Redgwell, and Charlotte K. Williams
• Nudes in Nature photography exhibit by Laura Aguilar at the Phoenix Art Museum
• Photographer Laura Aguilar

The Full Transcript

Kristin Hayes: Hello, and welcome to Resources Radio, a weekly podcast from Resources for the Future. I'm your host, Kristin Hayes. Today's podcast topic is the sustainable production and consumption of plastics, something we haven't talked about too often here on Resources Radio, but is highly important for the overall health of our planet. I'll be talking with Dr. Fernando Vidal about a new paper that recently came out in the journal Nature on which he was a lead author. That paper is focused on designing a circular carbon and plastics economy for a sustainable future. This paper was a key output from the University of Oxford's Future of Plastics program.

Fernando earned his PhD in inorganic and polymer chemistry from Colorado State University here in the United States before joining several groups around the world working on innovation in polymers, including the research group at Oxford responsible for the research that we'll be talking about today. Today, he's a postdoctoral researcher at Polymat in the Basque country in Spain, which is his home country. Stay with us for a deep dive on a subject that the vast majority of us interact with every day.

Hi, Fernando. Thank you so much for joining me today on Resources Radio.

Fernando Vidal: Hi. It's my pleasure to be here.

Kristin Hayes: Great. Why don't I ask you to start by telling us a little bit about your background and your research interests, and maybe specifically how you became involved in the Future of Plastics program.

Fernando Vidal: Absolutely. Like you said, I'm a polymer chemist by training, which means that I am interested in how we make new plastic materials, and particularly now, I'm interested in how to make them more sustainably, but without really compromising their performance, as well. That also requires a particular understanding of the material at a molecular level.

For instance, at Oxford, in the group of Professor Charlotte Williams, where I was working, we developed carbon dioxide–based plastics, what we call “polycarbonates,” with the idea to compete with elastomers and other commodity thermoplastics that we use today instead of fossil resources.

Today, I'm employed at Polymat in Spain, and I'm investigating new ways of making additive manufacturing and 3D printing more circular by implementing new recycling pathways. The way I joined this project at Oxford was really nice. I basically was invited to participate in the Future of Plastics program, which is based at the Oxford Martin School. It's a research and policy unit at the University of Oxford.

There, I was very fortunate to work with a really brilliant team of academics. They basically asked themselves the question, “How do we solve the plastic problem?” These great people include chemists led by Professor Charlotte Williams, but also environmental economists led by Professor Cameron Hepburn and international law scholars led by Professor Catherine Redgwell. It was really nice. It really fascinated me to interact with such a diverse group of people with such a wide background. After four years of collaborative work, we basically came out with the paper that you mentioned.

Kristin Hayes: Fantastic. Well, that was a great illustration of the interdisciplinary nature of the conversations that are needed here, too. Thanks so much for that intro. You mentioned the plastics problem that we have. Let me start by asking you to summarize what the current challenges and problems of our current plastic economy actually are.

Fernando Vidal: Yes, of course. There are actually two main problems that I would like to highlight today. It's possible that many of the listeners actually are already quite familiar with them. The first of them is the massive problem of plastic pollution. At the moment, the rate for plastic recycling is about only 9 percent of all the collective waste, which means that, of course, a lot of the plastic that we use ends up being lost and contaminates the environment.

There's actually a quite daunting calculation that estimates that the amount of carbon that is trapped in those plastic wastes around the world in landfills or that have leaked to the environment doubles the total carbon in human and animal biomass on earth with all the negative consequences to the health and the ecosystems. That's one problem. But the other big problem is also the greenhouse gas emissions emitted by the plastic life cycle, which also contributes to global warming. In fact, it's estimated that the carbon footprint for the plastic economy globally is about 1.8 gigatons of carbon dioxide, which is roughly the size of the combined national emissions of Germany, the United Kingdom, and France.

Kristin Hayes: Those types of statistics and the comparisons that you made are really helpful to give us a scale of the challenge that we're talking about here. It is a huge challenge, but not one that you and your coauthors shied away from, which I think is great.

In this paper, you and the team are proposing a new framework for a future plastics economy and four targets that are needed to deliver that economy. Let me ask you to lay out that framework for us and say a little bit about those targets, and then we can dive into those in more detail.

Fernando Vidal: What we propose is to break away from the current linear plastic economy that we all know where we basically take resources from the environment, we transform them into products, we use those plastics, and then we throw them away. Instead, what we'd like to think is in terms of the circular carbon and plastic life cycle. Our vision was that if we focus on that carbon that is stored in those plastics, it might make that difference.

Basically, the average plastic contains about 75 percent of carbon by weight. It should be a very good tool to track the conversion of plastics from waste back to feedstocks. The game then turned into a question: How do we maximize the recirculation of that carbon? In doing so, I think that we can tackle those two problems—both the plastic pollution and also the greenhouse gas emissions.

We do propose four specific targets: basically, the reduction in plastic demand by half; the breakaway from petroleum-based plastics; and a switch to renewable plastics. We also propose to maximize recycling to over 90 percent of all holistic waste. Finally, we also look at ways of minimizing all environmental impacts. This is absolutely a very bold change, and there's definitely no silver bullets for accomplishing this. We cannot apply any of these targets in isolation. We need to pursue all of them simultaneously.

What we found is that, using systemic models already published in the literature, accomplishing this bold scenario has the potential to save 95 percent of the emissions of the plastic life cycle and bring it down to about 200 megatons by 2050, which is huge savings, and it can actually even become carbon neutral if we tackle those remaining emissions with carbon removal technologies. It might seem like a very daunting scenario to accomplish this. What we also propose in the paper is to look at smart design as a tool to guide this transition.

Kristin Hayes: Say a little bit more about smart design. What does that mean in this context? Can you give us an example of what you're talking about when you say smart design?

Fernando Vidal: Of course. Kristin, you probably already heard of the term “design for recycling,” which basically is an idea to design materials and products so they're easier to recycle at the end of their life; for example, by re-engineering colorless packaging or multimaterials so that they're easier to disassemble. But while this concept is quite good, we think that it's also a bit limited as long as it only focuses on improving the end-of-life management of plastics.

Instead, our vision is a bit more holistic. We think that smart design really questions all of the aspects of the plastic life cycle from origin to application, but also end of life and or how many impacts there could be to the environment and human health. We go beyond that, and we think about smart design as considering the product's lifespan, since some plastics may have an only short period of time for use—maybe days or months. Others need to be performing for decades.

We also consider the recombinability of products once they have served their function, which basically is the idea of the potential for recirculating their materials from waste to resources—both an economical potential and the technical potential. I can give you a couple examples of this. Products that stay in the economy for longer and are more easy to recover have the potential to remain recirculating in the economy for longer; for example, those plastics in construction or in textiles or in car parts. These materials need to be very durable, but we also need to increase the recycling levels of these materials. At the moment, they are not recycled so much. Ideally, we should switch to making them from biorenewable resources.

On the other side of the spectrum, we also have products that might be used for a short period of time and that hardly can be recovered. These are more inherently linear.

We should be targeting these first for elimination or substitution or simply redesign them so that we can improve their recovery; for example, in very complex packaging. There are even cases where polymers need to be dissipated in the environment because of their application. In these cases, they must be redesigned so they're fully biodegradable or compostable. The idea with this example is basically that we need to achieve these four targets simultaneously in a more holistic way.

Kristin Hayes: I definitely want to delve a little bit more into those four targets, but maybe I can ask you two follow-up questions.

Just to make sure I'm clear, smart design isn't a one-size-fits-all thing. It really is about understanding the use of the product, the longevity of the product, how much it needs to break down versus how much it can be collected. Smart design means product-specific. That's one question for you. Then, the second one is, Is anybody really doing smart design now? Do we have good examples of this already happening?

Fernando Vidal: Those are really, really good questions. To answer the first one—yes, we do need to be looking at the entire life cycle: questioning where the plastics are made from, what they are going to be used for, what performance is needed. How well can they be recovered at the end of their life? We need to make very important decisions from the manufacturing point of view to fit all of the best performances in all of those categories.

Then, in terms of how much is being done today, we're still behind on this ground. I think there's some groups and associations like the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, for example, that are starting to push ideas and guidance to some companies in the world to adopt some of these ideas into their products. But in order for it to be widespread and worldwide, we need to do a lot more work. What we actually need is a plastic treaty that will give us guidance and legitimacy throughout the entire world.

Kristin Hayes: I want to talk to you more about that, too, but let me make sure to give you some time to delve into those four targets in a little bit more detail, because I think those are really at the heart of the paper. The first of those was reduction in demand. You mentioned eliminating 50 percent of all plastics materials. I want to ask you to talk through that a little bit more and what that really means. Obviously, that's a huge task from where we are now. Say a little bit more about reduction in demand and the hurdles that we face in accomplishing that.

Fernando Vidal: You're absolutely right. Reducing the amount of plastic is a huge task. It basically implies that we need to reduce the rate at which we're increasing the demand of new plastics over the coming years. Plastic consumption needs to be growing at half the speed at which it’s growing today. The idea is to decouple the economic growth from this uncontrolled increase in plastic production. But at the same time, we obviously need to fulfill the socioeconomic needs of a growing population. We cannot disregard the important benefits of plastic products.

The first step here, perhaps, is to follow principles of sufficiency rather than superfluous consumerism. For example, promote more reuse business models or refuel stations. We also need to dematerialize products, so they contain less amount of plastics in general. Then, of course, we also have taxes and bans and other policies that we can use to reduce the amount of unnecessary and harmful plastics.

In terms of the biggest hurdles, perhaps we should be looking at ourselves first and our own consumption behavior. I think we need to start giving a lot more value to these really amazing materials and rather than just treating them as low-cost and dispensable products. Maybe again, the first step is thinking of how we can reuse them as much as we can so that we don't have to consume more virgin materials. Then, the second hurdle is mostly coming from the economic interest of the plastic economy itself. There's a lot of people and a lot of industries invested in the plastic manufacturing business and the capital that has been invested over the next few decades.

Kristin Hayes: Let's talk about the second of the targets. You mentioned renewable plastics. I've heard several terms. I've heard the term “bioplastics”; I’ve heard a couple of different ways of thinking about plastics that perhaps aren't as derived from fossil fuels. Talk to me about bioplastics and renewable plastics and how those could potentially replace fossil carbon–based plastics in a world where we can't actually reduce that demand?

Fernando Vidal: Like you said, bioplastics has become a very popular name for anything that means plastics of the future. In our paper, we don't use the term bioplastics; we think it's a bit restrictive in terms of the meaning. We prefer the term “renewably sourced plastics.” It's a bit more encompassing. Beyond terminology, the point is that plastic needs to move away from nonrenewable feedstocks, like you were saying, including oil, natural gas, and petroleum. They need to be replaced completely by renewable feedstocks by 2050.

What I mean by that in this context are chemicals and materials that are obtained directly from recycled plastics, but also non-food-based plant-biomass resources and also captured carbon dioxide. By obtaining plastics from these resources, we would maximize that carbon recirculation that we were talking about, and it will help curve the carbon footprint of the plastic lifecycle.

One important statistic to think about is that plastic production from petrochemicals alone today represents about 6 percent of all the plastic life-cycle emissions. Just changing the way that we make plastics clearly has the greatest impact on the overall carbon footprint for the plastic industry. The other very important point is that in order for this to be viable, we need to transition to a carbon-neutral energy grid. That means that we urgently need the use of renewable energy to power the plastic industry.

Kristin Hayes: One follow-up question for you there. In terms of switching the feedstock materials, is that something that can happen in the context of existing manufacturing infrastructure, or is this going to take a whole new set of manufacturers, plants, and businesses to make plastics in these different ways with different feedstocks?

Fernando Vidal: That's a fantastic question. Some current petrochemicals can be derived from biomass and other resources. Those are called “drop-in plastics.” The idea is that you take the biomass or whatever other renewable resource, and you transform them into the current feedstocks of the chemical industry. That will be a direct replacement. But then, of course, there are other alternatives for new materials. They are currently not being implemented in the plastic industry, and that would require a slower implementation of new chemistries and new processes to make plastic more effectively.

Kristin Hayes: All right. Let's talk about this third target, which is about recycling rates. You mentioned that we're at 9 percent of plastics being recycled now, and the target is calling for over 90 percent of recycling rates of plastics for products currently in use. How are we going to get there?

Fernando Vidal: It's definitely a very ambitious target to get to 90 percent recycled plastics. The first thing we need to do, and we should be doing this already, is actually close the waste-collection gap. At the moment, there's a lot of consumers that are not even connected to local waste-management facilities. A lot of these communities are, for example, in remote rural areas with little or no access to plastic waste collection, which means there are many different unmanaged landfills and dumps, and that results in very uncontrolled leakage into rivers and the ocean.

This is a very enduring problem, especially in the Global South. We have one collaborator, Oxford Professor Richard Bailey, who estimated that we need to be connecting about 500,000 people a day every day until 2040 to close this collection gap. It really is a massive number—500,000 people a day—and that will account for all the population growth in the coming decades. Unless we do something about it, a lot of these people will still reside in places or in areas with little access to that waste collection.

That really is the very first thing that we should be doing. Then, of course, we have the problems of our current methods of recycling, which we also need to tackle at the moment. A lot of these mechanical recycling processes are suffering from material degradation or losses, and some of them are incompatible with some mixed-waste streams or multilayers or additives and so on. We definitely need more innovation for recycling. For example, making chemical recycling technologies more efficient and more selective is something that I'm interested in my current research.

But we also need upgrades in the current infrastructure and expansion in major technologies worldwide. Of course, we also need to implement the extended producer responsibility schemes, what we call EPRs; implement-deposit-return schemes; and incentives and subsidies all across. Then, finally, something relatively important, as well, is that we need to implement coherence between different laws that affect chemicals and products. There's definitely better alignment between different sectors, and this is particularly important between those sectors involved in recycling and manufacturing.

Kristin Hayes: Once again, you've done a great job of illustrating the number of players involved and the number of disciplines that need to be harmonized here. I definitely want to come back to that kind of cross-sectoral, cross-country-coordination piece. But before I get ahead of myself once again, let me just ask you quickly to give us a little bit more information about that fourth target that you mentioned, which is around minimizing the environmental impacts writ large during this transition. Tell us what that entails.

Fernando Vidal: As you can imagine, any transition to making new products or substituting plastics to new materials may risk creating new ecological burdens beyond climate change. For instance, switching to biomass may have risks for biodiversity or competition for arable lands for foods or the use of the use of freshwater and fertilizers and so on. But on the other hand, if we want to make plastics from carbon dioxide, even though they might have less competition for land, they might still demand for production of green hydrogen or renewable energy in general.

These burdens are examples of what the literature calls the planetary boundaries, which basically is what we call a safe operating space for human activities on earth. The goal of this idea of this new plastic carbon economy is to balance the amount of resources consumed and the renewable electricity that we need to power this transition while minimizing all of these boundaries at the same time. The good news is that the data that has been published already by other researchers suggests that this is indeed a possible task with our current technologies.

Not only that, but if we keep progressing in the future with new innovation, we'll definitely be able to drive these sustainable activities even further, and we shall be able to adapt to implement these new technologies.

Kristin Hayes: Excellent. I like that hopeful note, there.

Well, I know we're getting close to the end of our time, but I definitely want to talk to you quickly about this harmonization and cross-economy coordination that's needed here, because this really does represent a fundamental shift across the economy, and it requires this harmonization that we've been talking about. You mentioned earlier an international treaty. Say a little bit more about some of the ideal steps on the road map between here and reaching this really circular plastics and carbon economy that you've been talking about. How do we get there?

Fernando Vidal: We touch a bit on the importance of one key actor on accomplishing this into the coming decades. That's really the importance of the United Nations plastic treaty that was approved in 2022 for the beginning of the negotiations at least. That was really fantastic news, and we're hoping to get really ambitious goals coming out of the negotiations for this plastic treaty by the end of this year or next year. We have big hopes for this plastic treaty.

In terms of the timing for implementing interventions on the road map, we obviously think that the easier ones will be implemented first, and they should be mostly in terms of bans and taxes on unnecessary and harmful plastics. In the middle term, we'll see more of an expansion of biomass production and the expansion of the extended producer responsibility schemes that we talked about, more recycling targets, and the changes in design.

Then, toward the longer term, we'll see the biggest impact on the change in the fossil fuel–based infrastructure, the scale-up of the renewable resources overall, and that worldwide implementation of waste-collection infrastructure. What is also important to recognize throughout the coming years is that many different measures and interventions will be more rapidly implemented in certain areas, and certain economies where that availability of resources is more readily available and other economies will have a slower implementation.

But overall, even though we think that this might be a very challenging endeavor to change the plastic economy as we know it, the author team believes that the re-engineering of the plastic economy that we suggest here can definitely be achieved, and we should definitely be able to target a more sustainable plastic economy in the future.

Kristin Hayes: That's great. Thank you so much for talking us through the paper. I would encourage folks to check it out if they're interested in this topic as I would argue we all should be because all of us interact with a tremendous amount of plastic on a regular basis. This is a really important conversation, and I'm grateful for your time.

With that, let me close with our regular podcast feature, Top of the Stack. I think you've had a sense of what this is. Fernando, what's on the top of your stack?

Fernando Vidal: Yeah. When you asked me about proposing a recommendation for a Top of the Stack, I thought, What can I do? I just so happened to have visited the Phoenix Art Museum in Arizona a couple of weeks ago, and I saw a wonderful photography exhibition by Californian artist, Laura Aguilar. The name of the exhibit is Nudes in Nature. It is really, really interesting. It challenges our concepts of woman’s beauty and bodies, and she basically contrasts those forms very clearly with natural shapes that she finds in the landscape.

To me, it was a really striking exhibit because of her struggles and the way that she told them and how she interpreted her own body image because of her background as an underrepresented photographer and artist. It was really excellent and very cool. It was right next to the Barbie doll exhibit at the Phoenix Museum. It's a really interesting juxtaposition right there. Definitely recommend that exhibit by Laura Aguilar if you're in the Phoenix area. If not, check her out online. I highly recommend.

Kristin Hayes: That is great. Thank you. That's a wonderful Top of the Stack recommendation. With that, we will—no plastic pun intended—wrap up for the day. Thanks again for joining me.

Fernando Vidal: It was my pleasure.

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