Comment by eru
6 years ago
Yes. Though we don't really "need" oil for that. You can make plastics out of any source of carbon and hydrogen.
Oil is just convenient, because you need less energy to make the plastic than if you start with eg water and CO2.
That the whole shooting match right there. "just convenient" is meaningless - we don't make anything unless the cost/benefit works out. If we didn't have oil, it'd be safe to say we'd never have adopted ubiquitous plastic at all.