A detailed news text about the plastic waste crisis, its causes, and the efforts of petrochemical companies to perpetuate it, despite knowing that recycling was neither technically nor economically viable.
A picture shows plastic waste and used sachets of basic necessities discharged into drainage canals and lagoons, a major cause of the city's flooding and the spread of waterborne disease, at Obalende in Lagos, Nigeria's commercial hub, on July 29, 2022.
The Plastic Waste Crisis Isn’t an Accident—Big Oil Created It The plastic waste crisis is a result of the petrochemical companies’ concerted effort to sell the public on plastic recycling, even when they knew it was neither technically nor economically viable. With global plastic production increasing by 3-3.5% annually and expected to continue, the plastics industry has not only caused this crisis but also is bent on continuing it with no end in sight. The crisis is not an accident.
To protect their markets, the petrochemical companies began a decades-long, coordinated effort to sell the public on plastic recycling. They convinced people that plastic could be recycled, despite their knowledge that it was neither technically nor economically viable. No amount of effort, investment, public education, or consumer diligence can overcome a material that resists recycling at a molecular level.
Plastic’s intrinsic structure creates technical and economic barriers that make successful, safe, and scalable recycling impossible, as identified in the industry’s own internal assessments as early as the 1970s. The petrochemical industry has embarked on a nearly half-century-long campaign to prevent the public from learning about these limitations. Now, the world’s largest plastics producers make public commitments to expand the use and capacity of chemical (or “advanced”) recycling, even in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence and real-world failures.
Chemical recycling operations continue to flounder due to predictable issues, including many of the same factors that industry insiders identified decades ago, while companies quietly retreat from their heavily publicized commitments once their public relations value has expired. Plastics’ inability to be reused or recycled was not a bug but a feature. As one industry leader put it at the 1956 Society of Plastics Industry conference, ‘The future of plastics is in the trash can.
’ Their main objective was to ‘teach people how to waste. ’ To actualize plastics’ true selling potential, the industry would have to ‘teach people how to waste. ’ From there, the world’s leading petrochemical companies, with their ethos of single-use disposability, went on to create the plastic waste crisis.
Gardiner describes the more than 100-year evolution of the plastics industry, including its deliberate efforts to reshape society from one that reduced and reused its materials to one that simply disposed of them. Disposability equals profitability to the industry. Gardiner details how plastics’ inability to be reused or recycled was not a bug but a feature. The American public, though, quickly became wary of plastics and began to push back.
In response, the industry first promoted landfilling and incineration to hide the plastic from view. But it quickly became clear that these disposal options would not placate a public frustrated by a flood of disposable plastics. People did not want more landfills, did not want incineration, and did not want plastic in the environment. This public outcry led to calls for bans on single-use plastics.
The petrochemical companies, to protect their markets, then began a decades-long, coordinated effort to sell the public on plastic recycling, despite their knowledge that it was neither technically nor economically viable. No amount of effort, investment, public education, or consumer diligence can overcome a material that resists recycling at a molecular level
Plastic Waste Single-Use Plastics Petroleum Industry Coordinated Effort Recycling Campaign
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