Ninety-nine percent of plastic is made from oil and gas and has undergone several refining phases. Each processing phase generates toxic pollution that harms the health of workers, the land, air, and water. Toxic pollution from plastic production can accumulate in our bodies and organs, such as the brain and liver and can cause brain, nerve, and liver damage, birth defects, cancer, asthma, hormonal disorders, and allergies.

Since the beginning of fracking in the Ohio River Valley in 2010, the amount of plastic produced worldwide has doubled. This is no coincidence. The wet gas extracted from the Marcellus and Utica Shale underlying Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia is rich in heavy hydrocarbons and is an ideal building block for plastics. In 2022, Shell GLOBAL completed construction of the Shell Beaver Ethane Cracker. The Shell cracker can create 1 million metric tons of virgin plastic a year. Importantly, the Federal Safe Drinking Water Act does not cover water pollution from ethane crackers.

Plastics are some of the most commonly littered items in the world, drowning our planet—twenty-two million pounds of plastic end up in the Great Lakes every year. Less than 9 percent of plastic is recycled every year. Recycling has never been a solution to plastic. Big oil and the plastic industry have known that recycling plastic is virtually hopeless for decades. 

One of the newest scams from the plastic industry is advanced or “chemical” recycling. Not recycling at all; this practice is little more than plastic burning or rebranding of trash incineration. Ten plants are operating nationwide, two in Ohio, Alterra Energy and Purecycle LLC. The processes used are highly polluting, releasing toxic cancer-causing chemicals into the communities where they are located. The main goal of this process is to turn plastic into fuel. There are eight proposed projects, five in Ohio and three in West Virginia. The People Over Petro Coalition and our members are working to support communities at risk of being swindled by this industry scam.