As many of us adjust to working from the couch, with daytime television in the background and a confused dog at our side, it’s business as usual or double-time for the majority of Pennsylvania’s manufacturers and their supply chains. 

Critical to our ability to contain COVID-19, flatten the curve and treat those with confirmed cases are the necessary tools, supplies and infrastructure for the healthcare professionals on the front lines to get the job done.  

Disinfectants and intensive care medical equipment, such as ventilators and respirators, personal protective equipment such as reusable masks and gloves, therapeutics and laboratory supplies are all created using, or supported by, chemical manufacturing and each of these products are currently being manufactured in Pennsylvania. 

For the rest of us practicing social distancing from the confines of our home, we still need clean running water, electricity, food and medications to stay safe and healthy -- and that means continued manufacturing operations. 

The products in your grocery store, the ingredients for your last Grubhub order and the package containing the last available roll of toilet paper on Amazon that was just delivered to your doorstep don’t originate from just one retailer or one manufacturer. A product’s journey from raw material to your home is supported by hundreds, sometimes thousands of different companies. 

Take disinfectant wipes as an example -- a combination of polyester, cotton, cellulose from wood pulp, rayon fibers and sometimes polypropylene and polyethylene to reinforce the strength of the sheet. Each of those is a separate raw material manufacturer. To provide the cleaning and disinfectant power, wipes will typically contain potassium hydroxide, sodium hypochlorite, ammonium chloride and other substances. Again, a variety of chemical manufacturers support the production of those chemicals.  

That is just a description for the product. You also need packaging -- polyethylene or a pulp papermill to make the package, ink for labeling, adhesives to seal it, pallets to load and unload the product onto a truck, auto part manufacturers to ensure trucks can keep moving product and we haven’t even begun to dive into the manufacturers that make the parts and service the machines used by other manufacturers that are now working overtime to fulfill demand and will most certainly need replacements and repairs.

You can see how if the wrong jenga piece is pulled, it all comes crashing down, leaving food to rot at the manufacturer or cleaning supplies stuck in one part of the chain with no way to move forward. 

It doesn’t matter if you’re team dark meat or team light meat, we can all agree that disposable dinnerware is a blessing for your Thanksgiving host. 

Cooking is fun. Cleanup is not. 

Fear not, my environmentally conscious host. Innovations brought to you by the chemical industry can take away the guilt of single-use place settings.  

Across the country, companies such as Brightmark Energy, Vadxx and Agilyx are converting those hard-to-recycle plastics into a versatile mix of new chemicals, feedstocks, products and even more environmentally friendly transportation fuels. 

Rigid plastics, including bottles, are collected and recycled with success, but plastics such as polystyrene clamshell food containers, candy wrappers and plastic bags historically have been more of a challenge to recycle. 

Enter the chemical industry, bringing a solution to the table. 

The process is basic chemistry. The plastics are delivered for processing, contaminants are removed, and the plastics are heated, causing a change in chemical composition, and then cooled and condensed into fuels or feedstock for new petroleum-based products, such as plastic bags, bottles and containers. 

Because the molecules do not degrade in this process, it can be repeated indefinitely, creating a completely circular life cycle for a product.   

Combustion does not occur because oxygen is absent from this process. As a result, these facilities produce low or no emissions with a small environmental footprint.

The technologies for advanced chemical recycling and plastics-to-fuel have been proven and available for more than a decade, but through advancements and shifts in the market they did not become economically viable until the last three to five years. 

It is widely understood that the chemical and petrochemical industry are an economic driver for Pennsylvania, as this $24 billion industry supports more than 80,000 employees and generates more than $1 billion in annual taxes.

However, it recently came to my attention that many are acutely unaware of industry’s active role in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through process improvements, innovative products and new technology.

Pennsylvania’s natural gas liquids have provided the petrochemical industry a more affordable and environmentally friendly feedstock. Chemical building blocks such as ethylene make possible innovations deployed across industries to reduce GHG emissions.

For example, plastic-based building materials, such as insulation and sealants improve energy efficiency and reduce energy consumption for commercial and residential buildings, ultimately lowering the carbon footprint for large cities like Pittsburgh.

Across transportation, plastic parts have reduced vehicle weight, resulting in improved fuel economy and reduced emissions.

And industry is leading the way toward a circular economy with advanced recycling, enabling manufacturers to convert hard-to-recycle plastics into new chemicals, products, feedstocks and low-sulfur transportation fuels.

But it doesn’t stop there. Efficiency improvements in chemical manufacturing processes drive greater economic output from each energy unit, ultimately helping the world’s largest manufacturers transition to a low-carbon economy.

Chemical and petrochemical companies are a critical ally in reaching state and national emission reduction goals because the chemical industry supports more than 25 percent of the U.S. gross domestic product. 

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, from 1970 to 2017, U.S. gross domestic product increased by 262 percent while carbon emissions decreased by 23 percent. 

And in Pennsylvania, the Department of Environmental Protection reports that in 2015, statewide greenhouse gas emissions had fallen by 12 percent from 2000 levels. 

In a nutshell, because chemicals provide the building blocks for the products we use every day, leadership from this industry has resulted in economy-wide GHG emission reductions that span the entire value chain.

Many of these global leaders, responsible for innovations addressing climate change, have chosen to do business here in Pennsylvania.