Why ExxonMobil, Sinopec and Dow Are Betting On Plastic
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 7 ก.ย. 2024
- As the world transitions away from fossil fuels, oil and gas companies are looking towards plastic as their next major growth market, particularly in the developing world. But while producers like ExxonMobil, Sinopec and Dow Chemical are planning for growth, consumers are fed up with plastic waste, and governments around the world are seeking to limit new plastic production.
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Who Makes Money From Plastic?
So companies with billions of dollars in profit are still receiving subsidies for sustainable markets... why? That needs to end.
These companies aren’t gonna go sustainable unless they have an incentive to do so
must those companies stop employing ppl like you? I'm just asking.
@@HoustonKhanyile They don't employ me, wtf you talking about...
@@benhamrick6181 They're already sustainable. Check their balance sheets.
@@BloodyIron I'm not speaking about you specifically but I'm referring to you in a general sense. If you are not the working class that I am referring too then just ignore this comment.
I went to Europe for the first time this past summer and I was surprised that I saw hardly any plastic. They didn’t have plastic forks/knives, boxes, cups, or bags; it was all paper and forks were made of wood. It’s sad to realize the reality of the US. We still think we’re the greatest, but sadly we’re not. I blame all the old politicians in Washington for not having a backbone and pushing their beliefs before the peoples’. Like they say, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” That quote represents our entire government.
Sorry to disappoint you but the U.S is still more most immigrated to country
Money talks 💰
@@Rommie26 ya money does talk. And China overtook us as worlds wealthiest country a while ago and that only keeps widening every passing year. Meanwhile nothing is made in America anymore and the younger generations don’t wanna work… they just want to try and become TikTok famous or live off other peoples money. And at the end of all that is really only Latin American and Mexican people moving here and they are slowly becoming just as lazy as all the white spoiled kids. This country is headed back towards 3rd world not into the future.
They making money off plastics. It's a by product of oil. Turning waste into money and having the community deal with it. They don't care. Recently, they limited plastic straws like that's going to do anything major.
you don't need to be the greatest to feel good about yourself. for that, you just need to do the right thing.
@@shasmi93 I - lol - while i have seen some less than highly motivated immiigrants from south of the border (i texan)in the past year or so mostly they still work hard and 'love america' Recently i worked with a prep cook who would holler 'i love america' spontaneously outta the blue at work. he loves america so much it just busts outta him sometime, he cant help it. The other chef's chuckle but i took him aside "hey, juan, we all love america but act like you been here a minute ok?" biggest smile, so many native born americans have no perspective thus no appreciation how great it is to be an Americano.
I aint met no lazy mexicans, Salvadoran, only them Hondaruns - i dont hire them anymore given how many knives we keep in the kitchen.
Over here in the Netherlands we changed our legislation by July 2021. Only bio-plastic based disposables like cutlery and straws are available. I believe this is just the beginning.
So make people starve to make plastic? You libs are funny
@@NashHinton how is that making people starve?
Do you know the carbon footprint of paper vs plastic?
@@octaviosalinas4269 This legislation has nothing to do with paper
@@skygge1006 Bioplastic comes from grains
So, we still subsidize the oil industry. Why? Why we don't subsidize recycling?
greed
are you serious? the recycling industry has always been subsidized. the fee you pay per bottle or can is literally a recycling subsidy.
@@trinydex It's a *deposit*; big difference. You get the deposit refunded if you dispose of it properly.
@@planefan082 it's still money that goes to the recycling industry. it was voted for. it is executed as a fee outside the cost of the product. that's still a subsidy.
@@trinydex subsidy
ˈsʌbsɪdi
noun
a sum of money granted by the state or a public body to help an industry or business keep the price of a commodity or service low.
The government provides zero tax money. It's a fee. Fees and subsidies are two different things; if it doesn't cost anyone anything except for the customer, it's not subsidized.
If the government has money to subdizide plastic production, it also has money to pay plastic recyclers. There is a lot of technology in the industry and it is possible to manufacture really good quality post consume recycled plastic today, they only need investments to be competitive with virgin plastic.
Why is plastic subsidized in the first place?
Sounds like a good idea. All the government has to do is overcome the industry lobbyists (like with tobacco) that wants to keep the status quo.
@@izakkanter4459 probably to make it cheap to sell goods that need packaging
@@Fr00stee by making taxes more expensive?
@@izakkanter4459 most of our taxes are going to military anyway i doubt this subsidy increases them that much. If you wanted to pay less taxes the easiest way would just be to cut military spending and streamline the healthcare system
Our greed will destroy us
Here's an idea: print some dots or stripes on the plastic... Let's say "magenta dots".... That color will be uniquely used in products made of plastic.
A machine that can see "magenta" will detect what's plastic and will separate it from the rest of the other disposed material.
That will make recycling plastic more efficient and reduce the cost of recycling.
And this could go further: for different kinds of plastic a unique color to make easy to separate them from the other material.
Nice idea actually. I hope it gets implemented.
Nah, it won't ever take--no, hang on, that might just work!
East Asia needs to follow Europe in plastic consumption. If you've been to East Asian supermarkets, they go overboard on plastic packaging.... Individually wrapping fruit for example!
Best of luck with poking Winnie the Pooh.
But this is not always true. If you go to super market in China, they have strict rule of using plactic bags. They charge much on every single use, so urge people to use their reusable bags.
There’s recycling incentive programs and supply chains that feeds back as feedstock for remanufacturing plastic in Asia, which could not take off in Europe. For whatever reason that maybe.
I hope there’re more vending machines for sandwich bread, milk, yoghurt, ice cream, cookies & sweets that automatically packaged them with biodegradable packaging material right after paying. Vending machine need to set (temperature & humidity) to maintain food life shelves. Shampoo, shower gel & toothpaste refills through vending machine also might reduce single-use plastic consumption ultimately in dense urban areas. Make payment method convenient for all people (debit & credit) which other choice of cash payment..
Whole of Asia use ridiculous amounts of plastic
Theses companies should not able allowed to open new plants or extend existing ones unless there is a recycling unit attached. This cost needs to be worked into the price of plastic.
What would happen if subsidies were switched from virgin plastics to recycled plastics?
why not invest in alternatives like paper, wood, glass, aluminum or rocks?
@@dool1002 rocks?
Recycled plastics have a technology barrier. They can’t do it very well, or the ideas are dumb. Like plastic pavements or bricks. End up with micro plastics in the environment as they wear down. Best second use of plastic is to burn it.
@@dool1002 I think it is a both/and problem. We need better alternatives and we need to make use of what's already produced.
@@jakefromstfm basalt (volcanic rocks). currently being widely adopted
* It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment. - Ansel Adams
I like micro plastics in my fish, it gives it a great flavor
Add a little crunch
A lot of companies claim that plastic recycling isn't viable, but the company that I work for seems to be able to prove that wrong in many different ways. Plastic is statistically the best material that we have access to both in terms of CO2 production and usability, however we need to make sure that we can efficiently turn it into new products, which most companies seem scared of trying to do arguably because of greed and corporate bureaucracy. There are ways to recycle successfully, both mechanically and chemically, we just need to change the way that we've done recycling in the past, which has 100% been a bunch of BS.
Great the company you work for should do it themselves and make all the billions of dollars, why complain about it online. Make the money
@@chiquita683 we do recycle ourselves, but that doesn't mean that allowing other companies to squander resources is acceptable. We're dealing with the issue to save your planet because nobody else is stepping up while many people spend tax money knowingly allowing a broken system continue to fall apart.
Nope, it does not work.
As long as it is cheaper to throw away, or burn, it will happen
Also, if low value, people will discard it
@@aitorbleda8267 but that's the thing... as someone who has a bit of insider knowledge, I can confirm that it's actually very expensive to just throw things away. Recycling is the way, it just needs to be done competently, and unfortunately competence in the industry has been lacking, although there are new players in the market who are making silent changes.
I hope there’re more vending machines for sandwich bread, milk, yoghurt, ice cream, cookies & sweets that automatically packaged them with biodegradable packaging material right after paying. Vending machine need to set (temperature & humidity) to maintain food life shelves. Shampoo, shower gel & toothpaste refills through vending machine also might reduce single-use plastic consumption ultimately in dense urban areas. Make payment method convenient for all people (debit & credit) which other choice of cash payment.
companies that produce plastic should also be made to recycle it :)
Plastic is a waste of energy use when it is one time use.
Why not using standardized reusable bottles?
Plastic is used in many more products, not just bottles
@@latenightthinker4737 we can start by that
Amazing they never present a single reasonable alternative. Useless
If not worth recycling, burn plastic in poweplants to generate electricity and central heating like we do in Sweden.
I see a parallel with the way we treat our veterans. Once no Longer needed... Could do much better.
Aluminum cans were a way for kids to make little $ 1970's, 1980's . Now the scrap value has dropped to .31 per pound. Neither kids nor homeless pay attention to aluminum cans. ~ 90% go straight to landfill,
He should be picking out every piece of plastic in the trash that we pay for every week. Not hiding the plastic in the dirt with a bulldozer.
im sure a multi pronged approach is what is needed to fix the problem. but it seems one of the big costs making recycling expensive is the labour required to sort out the different plastics that are collected and brought to recycling centres. some are reusable, some are not. so perhaps a colour coded dot on every piece of plastic would solve this along with loads of recycle bins with matching colours everywhere. that way the consumer does the sorting and eliminates the cost. red dot plastic goes in the red bin, blue dot plastic goes in the blue bin etc. then the bins go off to their respective recycling centres to begin their "new lives" or get burned etc. eliminates 90% of the sorting required if nothing else.
Not true we have numbers on the bottom of plastics. The colors could easily wear off or blend in with the package it could still be hard to see. If the item is contaminated it makes all the other items it touches also contaminated. There are also plastics that are small or combined with other materials that they think they are recyclable and they are not.
I think that we need to encourage places like Trader Joe's , Aldi, and Whole Foods to collect plastic, glass and aluminum. The stuff they collect they can reuse to make their off brand products. They could make it a competition if they wanted. . This way some of the recycling will be off set and it will be less work , and reduce the size of the recycling loads the Collectors need to gather.
@@carochan86 you dont print the colours on, they are formed in the plastic out of coloured plastic when the item is made. that way they cant rub off.
Hemp based plastics are the only plastics that should be used.
Its one thing to rage about plastic, but another to suggest a functional replacement that is more cost effective than Plastic.
Half the issue is waste disposal in the developing world.
I don't think anyone is serious about plastic problem. we have protest against mass shooting, black rights, anti-masks, etc. but giving the scale of this issue and the speed of it's growth, there should be protest everyday everywhere. so what is happening, are we need to smell under our nose to start thinking about it? good and we will because it's already too late
Personally, l wouldn’t buy an electric car, l’ll see how they are in 10 years. Combustion engines aren’t disappearing anytime soon.
We as a species deserve to go extinct
~Joe
I swear anytime anyone wants anything these days they just stick "justice" on the end of it...
not enough toilet paper?
"oh we gotta fight for toilet justice!!"
Problem is a reusable bag has 2000x the carbon footprint of a Walmart bag.
Are we sure it's going to be used 2001 times?
Sadly It's just not that easy
Yes that's a valid point. But what if you use your plastic bag more often, let's say because it is mandated that you can't give out plastic bags for free?
I wish they would recycle more glass like they used too.
I hope there’re more vending machines for sandwich bread, milk, yoghurt, ice cream, cookies & sweets that automatically packaged them with biodegradable packaging material right after paying. Vending machine need to set (temperature & humidity) to maintain food life shelves. Shampoo, shower gel & toothpaste refills through vending machine also might reduce single-use plastic consumption ultimately in dense urban areas. Make payment method convenient for all people (debit & credit) which other choice of cash payment.
How about eatable packages?
Shampoo, toothpaste and other consumer chemistry products produce much less plastic waste since we use much less of them than we eat food
@@ain92ru Still a step forward.
single-use plastic production must be banned worldwide and the world must urgently switch to refill-reuse system.
I agree, we all see this problem. The only thing the article did not do and would be great for a followup, is to discuss technology or current experimentation that can decompose plastics or make more biodegradeable alternatives
Only PP is recyclable. Ban all the PE and PET products.
Plastic ban laws in United States let you buy plastic product and give you a paper bag to carry it & call it eco friendly
A paper bag that requires the clearance of land for "sustainable" forestry, making a bigger environmental impact than if you just made a plastic bag out of natural gas.
Algae is probably the better route.
What do we have to do to get regulation against virgin plastic production?
Packaging keeps being necessary.
But the waste of plastics is even worse than just CO2...
George Carlin “ humans meaning to being here is to produce plastic for the earth. The earth wanted plastic but couldn’t make it so we were invented to do the work. Now we can die off our mission is completed.” Sounds about the way we are headed…
Government and Environmentalists slowly pushing poor people back into poverty. They are poor enough the way it is, now you want to legislate them into using more costly food packaging and other products. Hypocrisy at it's finest.
I work at a plastic plant.
Its way more than you think just changing formula for bio degradable. The entire equipment and machines have tk be changed. And the manufacturers that use the plastic from the plants need to change and demand them
We use those plastic pellets to lubricate the drill pipe as we drill for more oil and gas, true story
I thought thumbnail was a rock band and a crowd full of people 😂
Other than stating the obvious that electric cars will be phasing out fossil fuel cars, you never answered the question of WHY the oil companies are betting on plastic if so many people are trying to reduce use of plastic.
demand of plastic in the emerging markets is fulling it.
Most oil executives don't seem as smart as they think they are.
In India we are drowning in plastics,many stray animals die due to eating polythene
Its all Chinas fault, why did they stop importing? All was fine! - US
I love how going green is using million upon millions of batteries. If you know anything about the production and what happens to dead batteries you sure know thats not "green". Just look at Cobalt and the new blood money coming from it due to battery production. A new multi billion resources
Im not for plastic but its not going anywhere anytime soon. And for those in the US follow the recycling of your household recycling. A lot of it, depending on where you live, goes to the landfill and it not recycled. Remember in the video it talks about "trash recycles"? Yes thats thrown out. Or if there isnt a plant that accepts or its cheaper the city just throws it out
Cobalt is already nearly phased-out in favour of all lithium (super common), and even that is being used more efficiently. Fossil fuels are already pretty much the most efficient they can be; green alternatives are already financially beneficial (if not superior in many places, without subsidy) and they're in their infancy compared to old, established technologies that have had time to flesh out not to mention accrue political will and excessive subsidies
Hopefully we get things right someday, but I’m not holding my breath.
If your videos are already structurally divided into chapters, you should use TH-cam's built-in chapters feature to make them easier to navigate.
I understand everyone is worried about climate change, and they should be. That should be the main focus for everybody.
However, I don’t think putting a big shock to the system and saying that you were going away from oil right now is the wisest thing.
I think the big goals should be balancing the carbon equation- with oil essentially being only on one side of the equation.
- everything needs to be balanced, and that means the other side of the equation needs to be developed as large as oil is now, besides helping the oil companies balance, their carbon footprint.
The more people you help, the more allies you have in achieving your goals.
The world can be in balance again, and you can create whole new sectors of everyone’s economy, providing jobs and opportunity
Plastic companies should pay cost for cleaning up the mess
I'd like to see the windmill farms take out less birds.
Another solid video by cnbc keep up the good work!
Before the 80s we didn’t have plastic bottles. Make these companies recycle or don’t use at plastic at all
3:44 The subtitles say “dyes”. It should say “dies”.
As for as plastic goes. Make them thick and durable. Then add on a premium that the customer will get back when the bottle/jug is returned for cleaning and refilling.
Basically treat it the same way that glass bottles use to be treated.
Please make a video about the company ALPLA in Austria. They are one of the world’s biggest plastic packaging producers. Have companies around the globe. They work with massive brands and greenwash their own products by saying that there items are possible to recycle and move the full responsibility to the consumers.
Most of the plastic litter actually blows out of garbage trucks. Ticketing the littering garbage trucks rather than banning plastic makes sense.
Just want to say one word to you...just one word. Plastics. There's a great future in plastics, think about it. Will you think about it?
I am Taiwanese, and I felt ashamed when I saw people against Formosa Plastic.
Where is your coverage of the massive trucker's freedom protest in Ottawa????? HMMMMMmmmm
Make these corporations pay for the cleanup.
No we are not moving away from fossil fuel. Also Plastic is one of the byproducts of oil.
10:36 while plastic is a critical problem that we face. unless there is an alternative for that which they are seeking to replace, they'll just come back. If legislations restrict these companies in their home turf they'll offload their industrial bases abroad, if not them then another company from another country will replace them. If there is a demand supply will find its way.
The real problem is as follows:
Every time plastic is recycled, the polymer chain grows shorter, SO ITS QUALITY DECREASES. The same piece of plastic can only be recycled about 2-3 times before its quality decreases to the point where it can no longer be used.
Credit to national geographic.
However there are ways to recycle plastic using chemical methods. A lot of companies claim that plastic recycling isn't viable, but the company that I work for seems to be able to prove that wrong in many different ways. Plastic is the best material that we have access to, however we need to make sure that we can efficiently turn it into new products, which most companies seem scared of trying to do because they don't know how.
@@mylespeterson7384 sounds really interesting, can you give me some information about your company?.
@@achiyederi3622 sure! It's a growing Albertan company called Terracore Plastics and manufactures patent-pending MDF and plywood alternatives with undesirable waste plastic producing a product that has a ton of environmental and health benefits compared to OG panels while actually being able to match prices of the traditional stuff. The desirable polymers are recycled so they can be used by other plastic manufacturers. Pretty neat stuff IMO.
Look up Powerhouse energy PLC, they take waste and convert it into hydrogen using DMG which is an advanced thermal conversion technology.
I had a conversation with one of my dad’s engineer friends decades ago. About smog at first but at the end he said, “Using oil as fuel is a great waste when one regards its uses as a raw material”, meaning plastics. The main thing that has to happen with the big, controlling corporations for the future is start controlling their unintended consequences and pollution. To be honest, responsible and sustainable.
Plastics from oil will drop. Plastics can be made from lots of other stuff.
Who makes money from plastic: literally everyone. Plastic is everywhere in everyone’s life, the creator of this video literally uses his laptop (plastic) to create the video to make money from it. Plastic is so tied into everyone’s life that everyone is profiting from it (from convenience to profit making). The reason humans can’t get rid of plastic is because we always want to find someone to blame when everyone is in fault. If humans don’t rely so much on plastics’ convenience, the companies making plastics wouldn’t even make profit in the first place. You either live your lives comfortably with plastic (and stop trying to find someone else to blame), or move to nature and survive without the progress of civilization. But no, most ppl these days enjoy the comfort of plastic and civilization while trying to find someone to blame for destruction of environment.
For you what is nature or natural
Yes I'm doing my best to go zero plastic nowadays.
It all depends how you look at plastic waste it can be recycled, broken down into a plax liquid or used as waste to energy. It takes 98 barrels of oil to produce one tonne of plastic so most refineries are catered for the polymer industry. The most important thing is what you do with plastic yes there are rich countries who dump their waste to Africa and from down there no checking at how they dispose it.
10:13 how do you even quantify social costs ? medical bills ?
how do they plan on using 50% recycled plastic if they don't pay enough for it to make it worth recycling the plastic?!
The price of rPET (recycled polyethylene teraphtalate) used to be lower than virgin PET (PET unlike other plastics can be recycled mechanically and as many times as you want without degradation). When the EU forced a plastic tax to plastics with a low content of recycled content the price of rPET doubled as there is no capacity to supply enough rPET for the regulatory demands.
@@juanjimenez-ws9fx prolly cuz china stopped supplying it lol
@@kingjames4886 The capacity of recycling rPET is doubling every odd year in Europe, and PET is easy to recycle (and very lucrative as it is the only polymer with a succesful recycle chain). The plastics that China used to process are heavily contaminated ones (printed plastics) or incredibly contaminated ones that can't remove contaminants in a reactor.
Plastic recycling the way it currently is being done is idiotic and impractical. The only viable solution is pyrolysis in which heat vaporizes the plastic and breaks the chemical bonds allowing the components to be fractionated in a distillation column just as in refining oil. The feedstock for a refinery. Sorting, cleaning, and reforming plastics will never accomplish anything significant.
Isn't plastic from crude oil , that is fossil fuel 😷
Everyone looks at these big companies making plastic and the lack of recycling effort from governments which is right. The issue comes when we don't change our habits to stop over consuming these plastics.
Shift the waste management back to producers is the only way to fix the problem.
I would say that producing plastics is less of an evil than burning those fossil fuels and releasing that carbon into the atmosphere. If they'd just increase the price of plastics, petrochemical companies could solve their "profitability problem" in the transition away from burning those fossil fuels, as well as deincentivize people from too easily overusing and wasting those plastics. The words "cheap" and "plastic" don't have to go together. Plastic is a practical material with many wonderful uses, and should be more valuable rather than just casually being such a disposable commodity. Just because something is common and is in demand shouldn't make it less valuable.
People really should think about how many of these single use objects they throw in the trash and try to visualize the impact they have.
If you stop using them, they will stop making them. Besides, sucking out of a straw is rather erotic.
companies is still looking forward to earn money from plastic products.
Fill bad for oil and gas companies because some countries in southern Africa have banned 50% usage of plastics for goods that have alternative.
No more plastic !!!
These companies behave like starving startups that can't survive without a few extra billions.
plastic is not cheap, is heavily subsidized like gas. so question is who is profiting from this : the oil/chemical companies or end user which will be end up (sooner or later) with an unlivable environment. you know what doesn't matter as long as we won't care
Use waste plastic to build roads, bridges, buildings.
While I was in Dubai i was also amazed it still uses plastic after all it’s so developed.
Lol, you can’t have your modern world without plastic
Great video
Developing world will be the target for advising not to use plastics while developed countries create tonnes of plastic wastes per capita!
But what's powering the power for those electric cars?...no really
The best solution is to ship it back to where it was created. Just leave it at its door step 💩 let them deal with it.
Use glass again like when I grew up
It isn’t rocket science. Big company’s need to not be so greedy and worry about the planet for our kids and grand kids and great grand kids etc.
what would you do if you were told in 2 weeks all plastics must discontinue production this industry is like the shipping
industry it cripell or economy to day but how did the pioneers get by without this stuff and why can't we go back
and recover the old ways of doing things to survive like they did 200 years ago ?
First. Yes, I'm elite. follow my ways if you want to be there at the same time you can get it done before you go to bed and the original Morpheus and the original one is a certified
bruh i just saw this lol
😅
@@blessed_bacon3776 deadass
Again this is why I have no idea why DNMR is trading so damn low!!!?!? Considering the importance it should be trading at $1000 a share
Question remains; Who is not innovating from over used plastics, that there is fruition to be had?
I hate the ignorance and the poisoning of our world with plastic polution and I side with communities providing awareness about all of this, but making this about skin color... c'mon now, let's be real here 😔
What about nuclear power
Is nuclear power going to replace all the applications of plastics!? Nope try again!
The problem is not industrie ore politics it's the corrupt nature of humans as a race.
The only problem is us humans, if we only tried to sort our plastics and waste, recycling would have been way easier.
1:53 When she says, "The air is polluted and the water is dirty" the video shows water vapor (clouds) and then treated waste water that's cleaner than the water it's draining into.
From last 30 years I haven't thrown any plastic waste the best way to get rid of plastic is to burn it , a average household produces half kg of plastic per week so if they burn it in such a amount neither it causes harm to other people
Burning is bad in general my dude, cuz its releases the hydrocarbons into the air. So yeah, burning 30 kg of plastic wont matter, but at scale it will affect the atmosphere for sure.
That has a far worse impact than landfill. It doesn't just disappear lol
someone really wrote c02 instead of co2 smh