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Well since the EIA doesn't keep that stat we'll have to look elsewhere (but what the heck do you think plastics are made from?).
So you don't have a source to back up your claim that 45% of the oil in the US is used to make plastics? Imagine that!
From the EIA: "Refined petroleum products produced in the U.S. from both domestic and imported crude oil are exported to other countries."
What's your point?
Start here:
Plastic bags are made from oil: it takes about 430,000 gallons of oil to produce 100 million plastic bags, and the U.S. goes through 380 billion of them a year.
A statistics class at Indiana U did the math: more than 1.6 billion gallons of oil are used each year for plastic bags alone. The more we use plastic bags, the more we waste oil.
Ok, 1.6 billion gallons of oil are used each year to make plastic bags, and "168 billion gallons of oil consumed in 2010" So what percentage of our total consumption goes to make plastic bags? Less than 1%. A far cry from your earlier claim.
Still many like us have switched to cloth bags which I think is smart.
Should have thought of that before you made your claim.
Many claim to have a concrete figure, but those figures are all over the map ranging from 2% to 25% of all oil used goes to plastics.
However, you're ducking the point - why not replace oil usage for all non-fuel usage of oil first?
I'm all for weaning ourselves off a finite resource, and that includes plastics made from oil, but what makes the need for reducing our use of oil for energy is due to the damage to our environment caused in burning it for fuel. You have completely ignored that consequence.