Day: October 27, 2021

The carbon-intensive production of plastics is on pace to emit more greenhouse gases than coal-fired power plants within this decade, undercutting global efforts to tackle climate change, a report released on Thursday said. The report by Bennington College and Beyond Plastics projected that the plastic industry releases at least 232 million tons of greenhouse gases each year throughout its lifecycle from the drilling for oil and gas to fuel its facilities to incineration of plastic waste. That is the equivalent of 116 coal-fired power plants.  “The scale of the plastics industry’s greenhouse gas emissions is staggering, but it’s equally concerning that few people in government or in the business community are even talking about it,” said Judith Enck, a former Environmental Protection Agency regional administrator and president of Beyond Plastics. Also, the report found that petrochemical facilities tend to be clustered in just 18 largely low-income and minority communities, where 90% of the pollution occurs.

The global climate crisis we are facing is impacting society, business and our environment. It is widely accepted that there needs to be radical change to the way we do business with an immediate focus on the next decade. We need to put in place more sustainable systems, that will allow us to meet the climate change targets set by the Paris Accord. Across the globe, businesses, both small and large, are making changes to the way they function to reduce their carbon impact and operate in a manner that will allow them to remain investible.  This event will look at BT’s climate action journey. Having set its first carbon reduction target in 1992, BT was one of the first companies in the world to set a science-based target aligned to a 1.5 degree pathway.