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.
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?
Oh, totally, the portion I was speaking to was the issue of local news being owned by news conglomerates so that’s where I see the grift coming from, mostly
And if we hold people personally liable, I’m more on board with that. I just would not touch taxpayer dollars for municipal, state, or federal funds with these suits.
Yeah - I’ve watched the Sinclair segment. I recognize that but that’s not the case everywhere. More troubling is how local newspapers are struggling and going out of business. I’m in Philadelphia where we still have decent locally-owned and/or operated journalism.
I’m not sure how the lawsuit would go down but I’d be open to whatever it takes to make the right changes. Perhaps the threat of digging into city coffers is precisely why nothing has happened in forty years. It’s already costing tax payers millions of dollars every year to not recycle. I’d support millions to hold people accountable and make the needed changes if that means saving us money down the road.
That has to do with fuckery around the term recycling. What normal people have been led to believe is only a very narrow definition of recycling and not what happens in most cases. Burning plastic is considered recycling as the waste is recycled into fuel.
Same with renewable energy… sure the trees you chip down and burn can be regrown… but that is not what people are led to believe is what they are being sold.
This is not on the local municipalities. They where saddled with waste and had to deal with it, they did as good as they could. And many people have been yelling about this since before 2000… It was just ignored untill microplastic where found in the balls and brain.
This along with big oil needs to be dragged infront of a tribunal and higher-ups from the last 40 years need to be held to account. We have room in the Hague.
FOR FORTY YEARS?!
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.
Yeah. Our city published the recycling restrictions on their website but people still put out stuff that’s not able to be recycled. Specifically, wet or greasy cardboard. They should send out flyers every year.
And they should educate in schools like they did in the 80s/90s when I was a kid, but give the real information. But without the plastics companies paying for that, it’s unlikely. Schools barely have enough money for the basics.
In my area, we have a small landfill bin, a larger recycling bin, and an even larger compost bin, all collected weekly. We have to put all food scraps in the compost. They also take greasy cardboard (pizza boxes, etc) in the compost. The compost is handled at a local composting center and residents can go there and get the resulting processed compost for free to use in their gardens :)
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.
Well, I mean the recycling bins in most cities just gets put in landfills. It used to get shipped to China and put in landfills there, but China stopped taking it now that they don’t have room for it and finally admitted plastic companies were lying about recycling it after lots of investigative reports.
Reuse is best but they really need to educate people and start actually fining people for putting the wrong stuff in the wrong bins if they do it repeatedly. Also, composting should be more widespread in larger areas to reduce waste.
But the biggest problem with burning the garbage is that they don’t properly collect the fumes. It’s expensive to do and would basically negate the income on the electricity produced. Some countries do it right and if done properly and if they are able to do it a lot, then it can be good. But Spokane is like the worst place to do it if you’re not collecting the fumes properly considering the climate and wildfire smoke that is already choking everyone all across the state and beyond. And plastic fumes are especially deadly for people with asthma, not to mention cancer causing. But a lot of cities still allow people to burn their own garbage and so many people burn plastics when they do. It’s horrible.
Ah yes, the fumes. That “Waste To Energy” incinerator is west of town in the area known as “West Plains”, near I90, near the airport, and not far from Fairchild AFB which these days is a locus of refueling operations and other support functions. Huge, 4-engined planes coming and going all day long. Long ago the AF firefighting ops polluted the groundwater there with PFAS chemicals and much of it is no longer fit to drink. Between that, the air pollution from military and civil air operations, and whatever comes out of the stacks at the W2E plant, I have to imagine the denizens of the area have evolved some powerful pollution-resistant genetics. Or maybe they just die young from cancer and respiratory and neurological diseases. Fortunately it’s a pretty low-income zone (think ‘typical military town’ - old skool Bremerton-ish) so all that disease can just be blamed on personal poor decision-making (like the decision to live there). A shame really, West Plains now has a ginormous Amazon warehouse that the residents could slave at (in addition to the super-Wally’s and the casinos) if they’d Just Say No to cancer and all those other tempting diseases.
As a fellow Seattlite…that’s simply not true. Seattle accepts plastics.
https://seattle.gov/utilities/your-services/collection-and-disposal/recycling/recycle-right
“…for recycling.” Seattle does not accept plastics for melting down and recycling, only for cleaning and reuse. If you’re putting all plastics with a recycling symbol in your bin, then you really should check out the “Where Does it Go” tool on the website. https://www.seattle.gov/utilities/your-services/collection-and-disposal/where-does-it-go
If you look through most of the plastics sections, if the item is not cleanable and reusable, most of the time it says to put it in the garbage bin. If you browse the site a bit you’ll see that they specifically mention that since China stopped taking “recyclables”, there is a lot less that can go in the recycling bin and it basically says to ignore the labels on plastics and instead go based on the reusability based on the function of the item rather than the material.
(Sure I probably shouldn’t blanket say that there is no type of plastic that they recycle, but for the average person who hasn’t worked in the plastics industry and doesn’t understand the difference between PVC and polyethylene for example, it’s best to just use the general rule of thumb that if it’s broken it goes in the garbage because it’s not getting melted down, reformulated, and made into a new, lower quality product in 99%+ of cases. People shouldn’t have to think that hard to know what bin to put it in, so it’s best to toss it if you aren’t sure. Otherwise we just increase the costs for everyone when more sorting and disposal has to happen at the recycling plant.)
I never said I’m putting all plastics in the bin. I know which can and cannot be recycled. You falsely said that Seattle does not accept plastic for recycling. End of story.
I’m the one who linked you their rules.
Yes, it should be easier. But that’s the case everywhere.
I specifically said “for recycling”.
And that is what this article is about. Not about cleaning and reuse, which can be done by anyone, but melting down and recycling which takes specialized equipment and a market for the reduced quality recycled materials, in addition to the expense of sorting and cleaning to reduce contamination.
Seattle does not recycle plastics nor does any recycling company in the US with the exception of a very small subset of materials which are primarily from industrial sources, not consumers.
It goes in the recycling bin. You said Seattle does not accept plastic for recycling. That is false. What they do with it after that is a different story. But you were basically telling people not to recycle any plastics in Seattle, against Seattle’s recommended policy.
But the entire point of this article was about “recycling”, not “reuse”. And “recycling” means breaking something down and making something new out of it, not cleaning and reselling for reuse which requires that the items are intact and cleanable. Seattle does not do that with plastics and thus does not “recycle” them. So as I keep stating Seattle does not accept plastics “for recycling”. Which is a true statement that can be verified on their website.
And reuse is not what the original article is talking about and thus not relevant. Most recycling companies process plastics “for reuse”. None in the US accept them “for recycling” (with the exception of some industrial sources) and never have since the beginning of the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” program in the US. They have always shipped that material elsewhere and those places have just thrown them in landfills. Which is the whole point of this article and discussion.