One of the more interesting stories from the inside that I have seen this year.
Basically, major corporations promoted recycling even though they knew that it would be ineffectual in order to stem criticism of the mass use of plastics.
The NPR article does a brilliant job of it:
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believing-plastic-would-be-recycled
Laura Leebrick, a manager at Rogue Disposal & Recycling in southern Oregon, is standing on the end of its landfill watching an avalanche of plastic trash pour out of a semitrailer: containers, bags, packaging, strawberry containers, yogurt cups.
None of this plastic will be turned into new plastic things. All of it is buried.
"To me that felt like it was a betrayal of the public trust," she said. "I had been lying to people ... unwittingly."
Rogue, like most recycling companies, had been sending plastic trash to China, but when China shut its doors two years ago, Leebrick scoured the U.S. for buyers. She could find only someone who wanted white milk jugs. She sends the soda bottles to the state.
But when Leebrick tried to tell people the truth about burying all the other plastic, she says people didn't want to hear it.
"I remember the first meeting where I actually told a city council that it was costing more to recycle than it was to dispose of the same material as garbage," she says, "and it was like heresy had been spoken in the room: You're lying. This is gold. We take the time to clean it, take the labels off, separate it and put it here. It's gold. This is valuable."
But it's not valuable, and it never has been. And what's more, the makers of plastic — the nation's largest oil and gas companies — have known this all along, even as they spent millions of dollars telling the American public the opposite.
NPR and PBS Frontline spent months digging into internal industry documents and interviewing top former officials. We found that the industry sold the public on an idea it knew wouldn't work — that the majority of plastic could be, and would be, recycled — all while making billions of dollars selling the world new plastic.
The industry's awareness that recycling wouldn't keep plastic out of landfills and the environment dates to the program's earliest days, we found. "There is serious doubt that [recycling plastic] can ever be made viable on an economic basis," one industry insider wrote in a 1974 speech.
Yet the industry spent millions telling people to recycle, because, as one former top industry insider told NPR, selling recycling sold plastic, even if it wasn't true.
"If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment," Larry Thomas, former president of the Society of the Plastics Industry, known today as the Plastics Industry Association and one of the industry's most powerful trade groups in Washington, D.C., told NPR.
...
Here's the basic problem: All used plastic can be turned into new things, but picking it up, sorting it out and melting it down is expensive. Plastic also degrades each time it is reused, meaning it can't be reused more than once or twice.
On the other hand, new plastic is cheap. It's made from oil and gas, and it's almost always less expensive and of better quality to just start fresh.
All of these problems have existed for decades, no matter what new recycling technology or expensive machinery has been developed. In all that time, less than 10 percent of plastic has ever been recycled. But the public has known little about these difficulties.
It could be because that's not what they were told.
...
It may have sounded like an environmentalist's message, but the ads were paid for by the plastics industry, made up of companies like Exxon, Chevron, Dow, DuPont and their lobbying and trade organizations in Washington.
Industry companies spent tens of millions of dollars on these ads and ran them for years, promoting the benefits of a product that, for the most part, was buried, was burned or, in some cases, wound up in the ocean.
Documents show industry officials knew this reality about recycling plastic as far back as the 1970s.
@philokalia saidThe problem of plastic won’t be solved until we stop making plastic. The recycling BS was never more than a fig leaf for the conscience of us consumers of this cheap and convenient packaging material.
One of the more interesting stories from the inside that I have seen this year.
Basically, major corporations promoted recycling even though they knew that it would be ineffectual in order to stem criticism of the mass use of plastics.
The NPR article does a brilliant job of it:
https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-believi ...[text shortened]... show industry officials knew this reality about recycling plastic as far back as the 1970s.[/quote]
I saw an article about biodegradable plastic equivalent made from peas but until the manufacturers of non biodegradable plastics are sanctioned out of existence by the tax system the environmentally friendly options will never be economically viable at the point of production and sale.
I think when we use the term economic viability we should be factoring in the future costs of disposal and damage to the environment.
16 Sep 20
@kewpie saidYour probably right but the moral and political complexities of achieving that goal far outstrip the technological and economic complexities of making people less toxic for the planet.
The best thing we could do for this planet would be to stop making people.
16 Sep 20
@kewpie said<smile> yup. That's a good start.
The best thing we could do for this planet would be to stop making people.