Buildings’ Hidden Plastic Problem
Published by Habitable, 2024.
Habitable’s policy brief, “Buildings’ Hidden Plastic Problem,” reveals stunning statistics about current and projected plastic use in buildings and includes recommendations to reduce plastic pollution—greenhouse gases (GHGs), microplastics, and toxic chemicals—throughout product life cycles.
This policy brief presents highlights from the significant body of science indicating that plastic building materials are contributing to serious health and environmental harms over their life cycle, from fossil fuel extraction to production, use, and disposal. These impacts fall disproportionately on susceptible and marginalized people, including women, children, Indigenous people, low-income communities, and people of color. The brief includes examples of solutions and offers recommendations to strengthen policies that will reduce plastic use in the built environment and associated life cycle harms.
The six main recommendations are:
Include building materials in the scope of plastics, chemical, and other relevant policies.
Target phase-out of unnecessary plastic building materials in favor of safer alternatives, prioritizing the most hazardous plastic polymers, such as PVC and polystyrene.
Ban classes of chemicals of concern from building materials and require safer alternatives. Alternatives include non-plastic materials that do not require these additives.
Use accurate service life assumptions for building materials in cost-benefit analysis.
Require full transparency and public disclosure of chemicals and additives used in the production of building materials. Mandate labeling where needed to ensure that hazardous polymers can be easily avoided and toxic chemicals do not enter recycling and other circular material streams.
Invest in research and development and pass policies to support infrastructure needed for circular systems of building materials management.
Read the full report here.
Endorsing organizations:
