The World in 2030

188 The World in 2030
Oil is, of course, the principal raw material for plastic
(about 4 per cent of global oil production is used for this
purpose) but because much of the energy (and the carbon)
remains trapped within plastic products during their
lifetimes the carbon emissions from the oil used as raw
material do not occur during production. As mentioned
earlier, the light weight and durability of plastics products
such as car parts, aeroplane fuselages, cargo pallets, building
insulation and packaging materials also serve to lessen the
carbon that would otherwise be emitted in a heavier, less
durable non-plastics world (e.g. a plastic wine bottle now
on trial in Sainsbury’s supermarkets weighs one eighth the
weight 358 of an equivalent glass bottle 359 ) XI . And the energy
trapped within plastics can (and, increasingly, will be) either
recycled or, in the future, recovered and used for heat
generation within carbon-trapping power/heat-generating
incinerators.
Natural gas is the cleanest of all fossil fuels and its
availability and popularity over the last few decades has
already had a mitigating impact on climate change. The ‘Living
Carbon Budget’ report prepared for Friends of the Earth by
the Tyndall Centre illustrated how natural gas has helped the
UK constrain its carbon emissions from power generation:
One key progression however, is the change in carbon
intensity of the UK’s electricity grid. Over the
long-term, the grid has gradually become less carbon
XI
UK consumers buy around one billion bottles of wine every year, using around half-a-million tonnes
of glass. Reducing the weight of wine packaging to 54g (2oz) by using plastic bottles could reduce
carbon emissions by around 90,000 tonnes, according to the UK government-funded Waste and Resources
Action Programme (Wrap).