In western Europe and the USA, about 110kg of plastic are used per person, per year; 30-40kg of which are used for packaging [1]. Significant amounts of energy and resources go into the production of this plastic. About 6% of all crude oil goes into the production of plastic globally [4]. Some of the crude oil is burned for energy to drive the chemical reactions for making the plastic, but most is used as starting material for making the plastic. In the case of Polypropylene* (PP) about 80% of the crude oil is used as starting material (see Table 1 in the appendix). We estimate, that if we could recover that oil, this would equate to a road trip of about 2400km per year for an average person in Europe (see calculation in the appendix). Or in other words; for an average person living in the Netherlands, the amount of (theoretically recoverable) energy in plastic products is about as much as the electricity used at home (~1.4MWh per year and person, see appendix for details).
That means that plastics carry a lot of potential raw material or energy. This potential is lost, when plastics are burned without energy recovery, landfilled or if they leak into the environment. A report by McKinsey estimated that “plastics reuse and recycling could generate profit‐pool growth of as much as $60 billion for the petrochemicals and plastics sector” [3]. To put it into our own words: every plastic trash pile is like a tiny oil well.
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* PP constitutes >19% of global plastic production, making it the most widely used plastic [1].
Sources
[1] Plastics – the Facts 2019: An analysis of European plastics production, demand and waste data
[2] Plastics – Environmental aspects (ernet.in)
[3] Ellen MacArthur foundation – Plastics and the circular economy
[4] Ellen MacArthur foundation – Global Commitment Definitions
Appendix
Table 1: Estimates on embodied energy in different plastic types. The first column gives the amount of energy in the used crude oil, which should theoretically be recoverable. The second column gives the amount of energy that went into processing, which cannot be recovered [2]. The last column is the energy crude oil part, re-expressed as a petrol fuel (assuming 100% conversion and 9.5kWh/liter).| Material name | Embodied Energy (kWh/kg) | Est. theoretically recoverable fuel (l/kg) | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crude oil | Others | Total | ||
PVC  |
6.7 | 8.1 | 14.7 | 0.71 |
PE  |
15.3 | 4.2 | 19.4 | 1.61 |
PP  |
16.1 | 4.2 | 20.3 | 1.69 |
PS  |
15.3 | 6.9 | 22.2 | 1.61 |
PET  |
8.6 | 14.7 | 23.3 | 0.91 |
PC  |
10.0 | 19.7 | 29.7 | 1.05 |
| Average | 12.0 | 9.6 | 21.6 | 1.26 |
| Material name | Fraction of all plastic | Per person and year | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Produced (kg) | Embodied energy (kWh) | Est. theoretically recoverable fuel (l) | ||
| PVC |
10.0% | 11.0 | 74 | 7.8 |
| PE |
12.2% | 13.4 | 74 | 21.6 |
| PP |
19.3% | 21.2 | 205 | 36.0 |
| PS |
6.4% | 7.0 | 342 | 11.3 |
| PET |
7.7% | 8.5 | 108 | 7.7 |
| PC |
19.0% | 20.9 | 209 | 22.0 |
Others  |
25.4% | 27.9 | 335 | 35.3 |
| Sum | 110 | 1346 | 141.7 | |
If we assume a car with 6l/100km, the 141.7l potentially recoverable fuel (Table 2) would equate to a 2400km car ride (per person per year – more if you share the ride :)). Realistically, there would of course be losses in the conversion, so this number would go down accordingly.
Note in Tables 1 and 2 that the numbers for kWh are chemical energy and cannot be directly turned into electrical energy.
Table 3: Average household electricity from Essent customers in 2020 (extracted from customer portal). Note, that electric heating is rarely used in the Netherlands (gas is mostly used instead).| Size of household | Total electricity consumption | Per person |
|---|---|---|
| (people) | (MWh/year) | (MWh/year) |
| 1 | 1.8 | 1.8 |
| 2 | 2.8 | 1.4 |
| 3 | 3.3 | 1.1 |
| 4 | 4.1 | 0.8 |