Despite billions of (often public) dollars being spent to facilitate the collection and recycling of plastic waste, less than 10% of all the plastic ever made has been recycled. Most plastic waste is incinerated, sent to landfills, or ends up littering our environment or the ocean.
In February this year a report, ‘The Fraud of Plastic Recycling: How Big Oil and the plastics industry deceived the public for decades and caused the plastic waste crisis’ was published by the Centre for Climate Integrity. In it the authors accuse the plastics industry of running:
‘a decades-long campaign of fraud and deception about the recyclability of plastics.. petrochemical companies—independently and through their industry trade associations and front groups—have engaged in fraudulent marketing and public education campaigns designed to mislead the public about the viability of plastic recycling as a solution to plastic waste.’
The report then details how the plastics industry has sold recycling to the public supported by numerous examples of campaigns designed specifically to achieve this goal. While the industry introduced Resign Identification Codes (labels with a number surrounded by a triangle of chasing arrows) to quell public disquiet about mounting plastic waste in the 1980s’ the industry privately admitted that ‘efforts to simplify source separation by labeling containers as to their material makeup . . . are of limited practicality.’
The plastics industry aggressively promoted recycling and its efforts were rewarded by the mid-1990s, when the industry declared the ‘plastics recycling war is over.’ Public concern over the plastic waste issue had dissipated and the ‘favorability of plastics increased 12% between August 1992 and April 1997,’ according to advertising research. By 1997 favorability toward the plastics industry was ‘comparable to competitive material industries [like paper, glass, and aluminum] among the general public.’
More recently the industry has responded to renewed public concern with the environmental and health impacts of plastics throughout their lifecycle by promoting ‘chemical’ recycling solutions. The industry prefers to refer to these technologies using the more palatable term ‘advanced recycling’ which includes a range of processes that seek to break down plastics into basic chemical elements so they can be re-born into new high-quality plastics (promoted as a means to achieve the circular economy). Most of these technologies are new and not in commercial operation. In fact, most existing facilities simply produce oil by pyrolysis which is then burnt as a substitute for fossil fuels.
The Centre for Climate Integrity concludes its report by recommending that ‘petrochemical companies and the plastics industry should be held liable for their coordinated campaign of deception and the resulting harms that communities are now facing. ‘
Rising to this challenge last month the State of California has now taken ExxonMobil, the world’s largest producer of single-use plastic polymers, to court alleging the company engaged in a decades-long campaign of deception that caused and exacerbated the global plastics pollution crisis. It alleges, ‘ExxonMobil has been deceiving Californians for half a century through misleading public statements and slick marketing promising that recycling would address the ever-increasing amount of plastic waste ExxonMobil produces.’ In particular, the company is accused of misleading consumers over the benefits of advanced recycling, with 92% of waste processed by ExxonMobil’s current ‘advanced’ systems becoming primary fuels. The lawsuit alleges that ExxonMobil has misled consumers and continues to do so by engaging in an aggressive campaign to deceive the public and perpetuate the myth that recycling will solve the crisis of plastic pollution. Hopefully, this will be the first of many such lawsuits targeting the industry and pressuring it to take responsibility for the plastic waste crisis.
With demand for plastic now exceeding half a billion tonnes per year the need to expand recycling capacity is imperative. The only practical way to reduce the impacts, caused by both the creation and disposal of plastic is by recycling it. The industry must be encouraged to develop and pay to get out of the mess it has created for the world. We need real recycling solutions, not more advanced window dressing. The State of California should be applauded for taking this brave initiative to hold this giant of the plastics industry to account.
ExxonMobil’s lackluster response can be read here.