Big oil and industry have been aware of the challenges associated with plastic recycling for decades, but have concealed this information in their marketing campaigns, a report by the Center for Climate Integrity Research now reveals.
Big oil and the plastics industry have misleadingly promoted recycling as a solution to plastic waste management for more than 50 years, despite knowing for a long time that plastic recycling is not technically or economically viable on a large scale.
The conclusion comes from the report “The Fraud of Plastic Recycling“, drawn up by the Center for Climate Integrity Research (CCI), which combines existing research and recently revealed internal documents. The authors claim that the report could form the basis for a lawsuit for violating laws designed to protect consumers and the public from corporate misconduct and pollution.
“When companies and trade groups know that their products pose serious risks to society and then lie to the public and policymakers about it, they have to be held accountable,” says CCI President Richard Wiles. “Accountability means stop lying, tell the truth and pay for the damage they’ve caused.”
The report reveals the fraudulent marketing and public education campaigns used to promote plastic as recyclable, convincing people and policymakers that recycling would keep waste out of landfills and the environment. As consumers took it upon themselves to separate their waste and local authorities invested taxpayers’ money in collecting and processing it, the single-use plastics industry expanded, while avoiding regulation to effectively stop waste and pollution.
Recycling plastic requires meticulous sorting, as most of the thousands of chemically distinct varieties of plastic cannot be recycled together. This makes an already expensive process even more expensive. In addition, the material degrades each time it is reused, which means that it can usually only be reused once or twice and becomes more toxic with each use.
Recycling began to be promoted as a solution by the industry in the 1980s, when municipalities began to consider banning supermarket bags and other single-use plastic products, which the industry said were easily disposed of in landfills or burned in garbage incinerators.
At the time the plastics industry launched its recycling campaign, the director of the Vinyl Institute trade group acknowledged at a conference in 1989 that “recycling cannot continue indefinitely and does not solve the problem of solid waste”.
Despite this knowledge, the Society of the Plastics Industry created the Plastics Recycling Foundation in 1984, bringing together petrochemical and bottling companies, and launched a campaign focused on the sector’s commitment to recycling.
After that, different associations, companies and groups in the sector were responsible for various strategies aimed at misleading the public, including: the launch of the widely recognized symbol for recyclable plastic, which the industry began using on packaging; the creation of research centers, pilot projects and advertisements on plastic recycling; and the promotion of chemical recycling (which breaks down plastic polymers into tiny molecules to make new plastics, synthetic fuels and other products), despite knowing that it was not a real solution to plastic waste either.
Despite years of recycling campaigns, less than 10% of plastic waste is recycled globally and the amount of plastic waste discarded into the environment continues to increase. The report claims that the industry’s misconduct continues to this day.
The idea that recycling can solve the problem of plastic waste “has always been a fraud and has always been a way for the industry to sell more plastic,” says Wiles.
In a statement, Ross Eisenberg, president of the industry group America’s Plastic Makers, said that the CCI report “cites outdated, decades-old technologies and works against our goals of being more sustainable by mischaracterizing the industry and the state of current recycling technologies. This undermines the essential benefits of plastics and the important work underway to improve the way plastics are used and reused to meet society’s needs.”
The publication of the report comes two months before the next round of United Nations negotiations in Canada for a legally binding global agreement on plastic waste. Negotiators from around 150 countries are expected to attend, as well as public health advocates, human rights activists, environmentalists and representatives of the oil and gas industry.
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This article addresses an action that promotes the adoption of urgent measures to fight climate change and its impacts. SDG 13 also aims to improve education on climate change mitigation and impact reduction.
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