Most US voters say plastics industry should be held responsible for recycling claims – report
Most US voters say plastics industry should be held responsible for recycling claims – report
Even a majority of Republicans support efforts to hold manufacturers accountable for allegedly deceptive claims
Even a majority of Republicans support efforts to hold manufacturers accountable for allegedly deceptive claims
Concern about the fossil fuel and plastics industries’ alleged deception about recycling is growing, with new polling showing a majority of American voters, including 54% of Republicans, support legal efforts to hold the sectors accountable.
The industries have faced increasing scrutiny for their role in the global plastics pollution crisis, including an ongoing California investigation and dozens of suits filed over the last decade against consumer brands that sell plastics.
Research published earlier this year found that plastic producers have known for decades that plastic recycling is too cumbersome and expensive to ever become a feasible waste management solution, but promoted it to the public anyway.
Remember in the 70s when the cigarette industry said their products were safe?
Remember in the 80s when the candy industry said it was the lack of exercise that was the cause of overweight?
Remember in the 90s when the gun industry pointed the blame to personal responsibility as the cause of school shootings?
Maybe just maybe industries can't self regulate. I can go on.
Whistleblowers should be treated like heroes. Like not just protections where the reward is that they get to keep their job working for a company that is probably going to feel hostile towards them, but reward them so that they don't need to work with that company anymore.
Publically funded science (done in the interest of the public rather than profit for universities or publishers) should also be ramped up so that it has the resources to examine these questions, too.
Also, criminal charges for execs that suppress information that prefers profits over safety.
You missed cars. 😁
Please go on, not that I need convincing, but would like to hear more, idk when was led? 60s?
Legislation on packaging should really be entertained as well. For many products a biodegradable form of packaging would be completely viable.
I would sooner hold out local municipalities who run the recycling centers and our investigative news agencies for not clearly informing the public that recycling plastic has not been the ecological solution we've been promised.
I mean, sure, the plastic producers lied but the recyclers have known about it this entire time too. How this has been such a secret for decades may suggest some deeper conspiracy.
And, if it's the case that our governments were genuinely unable to know this was an issue, we should be more critical of them for not knowing what other outside agencies are fooling them into using tax-payer dollars against our best interests.
The plastic producers were the ones pushing the grift and controlling the narrative/studies, just like what was done with fossil fuels and climate change (certainly a trend here with the oil industry).
Additionally, they're the ones that directly benefitted the most so it makes sense to go after their fraudulent gains.
I'm all for being critical of municipalities and elected officials, but the solution is not to bankrupt cities or state/federal funds through litigation. The focus should be on the producers. Go to the top of the chain/follow the money.
Edit: To your point about news conglomerates, that seems more viable and they certainly need better incentives and regulation.
Dude. It's been 40 years.
I didn't say news conglomerates. I said investigative news agencies - meaning the local news.
At some point over the past forty years, someone in government and someone at a local news paper has known there was a conspiracy. These people need to be held accountable. They're the ones who have cost tax payers hundreds of millions of dollars.
Granted, I may be giving too much credit to local government. I don't think most voters in the country care very much about electing people smart enough to put two and two together.
What I have such a hard time with is that people like yourself are so quick to excuse gullibility. The big powerful plastic company promised us it would be okay. Why would anyone dare question them or their motives? The fossil fuel company certainly has the public and the environment at their best interests. So many people are so quick to shrug and say "not my fault". Did you even attempt to ask questions or were you afraid that knowing the truth would be bad for your administration?
Seattle doesn't even accept plastics for recycling, only certain things for cleaning and reuse. They could do a better job in informing the public about it, though, since all of the products still stamp on the recycling symbols, most of which have never been actually recycled.
Also, decades of telling people to separate plastics for recycling into separate plastic types, like lids separate from bottles, undermines reuse because the bottles then get crushed without the lid to keep air inside. And crushing usually damages them too much to be cleaned and reused.
Spokane burns its ordinary trash. It also accepts plastics and other "recyclables" at an every-other-week curbside pick-up, using a separate bin, just as you'd expect. Then they burn it. Yes, just like the trash. But wait, they do the burning at a facility they call the "Waste To Energy" plant, so that makes it all OK.
It's all a big expensive greenwashing game, but everyone seems perfectly fine with it. La di da di da.
As a fellow Seattlite...that's simply not true. Seattle accepts plastics.
https://seattle.gov/utilities/your-services/collection-and-disposal/recycling/recycle-right
But the Republicans are going to vote for the guy who will sell them down the river Jan 20st 2025.
Fucking.
Morons.
Use to make machines for the plastic industry. None of them wanted tp use recycled plastic, because raw plastic pellets were cheaper and recycled plastic was harsher on the machines.
Recycled plastic is also terrible if you have any type of quality standards you have to meet. You generally end up creating even more scrap because the regrind always has some amount of contamination in it, and never performs the same as virgin.
Yep. When we made recycled units, the bearings got shredded and the drive motors got burnt out faster.
That's why recycling goes after reduce and reuse.
Recycled plastic is also inferior quality with worse structural properties so it's not really suitable for many applications.
Yep, regrind was bad.
Not saying anyone shouldn't recycle. Just saying in our world of cheap is God, why fight?
"Most US voters say" AKA Not Gonna Happen.
Yeah we have a government that represents corporations.
We need to put some of these CEOs on trial like we did with the Nazi's hopefully all of them will get their just punishment.
I was just following orders.
Don't worry, the industry wants looser rules on what can be considered recyclable. They want to be able to label things as recyclable even if the majority of people do not have access to a recycling facility that can recycle it. Fuck them. Honestly, we should force them to be the ones to recycle the plastic if they want to label it as recyclable.
Significantly reducing our reliance on plastics cannot be taken on as a single issue or at the local or even national level.
Plastics are a byproduct of the fossil fuel industry.
That’s the only reason materials which were marketed to people as miraculous in the 40s, 50s and 60s are so cheap.
The extraction industry is global, and the production of plastics is as well.
Even if one nation reduced its fossil fuel and plastic consumption significantly, there will be other nations that will take the opportunity to get that cheap energy, materials and industry.
Global solutions are nice to ask for, but not forthcoming. We can start by investing in alternatives at the local/national level, encouraging others to do the same, and advocating to grow an alternative way of living that is less extractive and more respectful. Ideas can spread quite quickly, if the conditions are right. A global switch isn't possible immediately. Infrastructure must be planned. International economic planning and international cooperation are low right now. Even intranational cooperation is low.
Cooperation grows from the bottom up, and we need to find something locally/nationally to agree on and cooperate over. Plastics and recycling being a unifying issue is hopeful to report, and is something that can be tackled at the local level. I have greatly reduced my own plastic consumption (it's not zero) and saved money doing it. Plastic products are usually expensive conveniences. Now I spend my days cleaning instead of just tossing and moving on. A part of the problem is that living well requires labor, and our society forces us to sell all of our labor energy to make a boss rich and pay us pennies. Further, we all live in atomized, nuclear units that must be self-reliant, which requires more labor to meet needs compared to the economies of scale involved with community-pooled labor to meet shared needs like food (a major source of plastics waste).
Previously, western society supported this structure via sexual segregation where one sex provided the labor to live well, and the other provided the labor donated to capitalism in exchange for the family unit being allowed to live. Then, the sex whose job it was to help us live well realized that they were being oppressed in this scenario, since they were being denied many basic rights of citizenship such as being seen as a person by society. They were tricked by the capitalists to demand that they may also donate their labor to the invisible hand in exchange for something closer to full citizenship. This creates a domestic labor vacuum that prevents pay parity. Domestic labor needs are being suppressed by convenience plastic use. The need for someone to do domestic labor causes women to fall back into this role due to the structural vacuum. Convenience plastics use is required to support the lack of time available now that Bosses demand double the labor from each family unit compared to the 1960s. Dropping plastics increases domestic labor requirements which exacerbates the sexual labor vacuum and pay gap. I see a local/national need to fix sexual issues as blocking a fix for our plastics addiction in the west. Abstracting the problematic societal structures around sex, calling them gender, and then breaking their rules is the current strategy to free ourselves.
I disagree, but this is a cool reply and you should keep posting like this.
Plastic recycling is a farce to make it appear as a “personal responsibility” issue.
Notice also how the labeling for plastics uses a sign that looks remarkably similar to a recycling logo - whether that specific type of plastic is actually recyclable or not.
It is all a public relation campaign, because fundamentally plastic is unsustainable and harmful. Governments have collectively shat the bed by placing the burden of dealing with plastic on the consumer. (This is very similar to the “carbon footprint” idea - which was a creation of the oil industry.)
I toured the place where my city collects its plastic recycling - the director in charge was very open about the fact that most of it isn’t used and can’t really be used anyway.
I mean, i get it, recycled plastic is harder to handle, etc. etc. But burning them for energy is no business?
In think plastic recycling is true and makes sense to do. I do it every week. However, all the plastic users need to act to limit it's use to functionality based requirements....can anything at all be used instead of plastic in this situation??? There's like 0 need to use plastic to box and ship things. Are you shipping an optic? Glass? A large flat TV? Okay there you should use plastics. Those plastics could be reusable first but also recyclable and the people selling the TV should be responsible for paying for the packaging to eventually get recycled. A watermelon 🍉 is way more fragile than a TV and we don't box those things. Only Costco has the brains to box fruit individually. That's just a waste.
