SECRETS AND LIES THAT ARE HARMING YOUR LIFE

RESEARCHING OUR DOCTORS RECYCLING FURTHERING OUR EDUCATION WE ARE DOING ALL THE RIGHT THINGS SO WHY ARE THESE COMPANIES TAKING ADVANTAGE OF SO MANY OF US?

1. THE RECYCLING MYTH Think you know where your old plastic ends up?

Once a week, you dutifully set out your bin full of recyclables for collection. You’re happy to do your part for the environment because plastic, which is derived from fossil fuels, contributes to pollution and climate change. And while it has its good points—plastic is both lightweight and durable, saving fuel in transport— the best thing about it is that it’s easily recycled. Now, about that ...

In fact, over the past four decades, less than 10 percent of all plastic in the United States has been recycled. Some items are reused more than others. We repurpose about 30 percent of used water, soda, shampoo, and bleach bottles. But that still leaves 70 percent piling up in dumps, or worse. China, the biggest market for our old plastic, stopped importing it altogether in 2018. While consumers may well be ignorant of this fact, the plastics industry is not. NPR, working with the PBS series Frontline, recently dug up reports sent to industry executives that called recycling plastic “costly ... difficult ... infeasible.” And this was way back in the 1970s and ’80s! “There was never an enthusiastic belief that recycling was ultimately going to work in a significant way,” Lew Freeman, former vice president of the industry’s lobbying group, the Society of the Plastics Industry (SPI), now the Plastics Industry Association, told NPR and Frontline.

Though not much has changed since those reports were written, the plastics industry continues to shovel millions of dollars into promoting recycling via ads and education. Why? Public relations. “If the public thinks the recycling is working, then they’re not going to be as concerned about the environment,” says Larry Thomas, another former SPI executive.

Communities have to do something with all that unrecycled plastic. That often means burning it with the rest of the trash. “About six times more postconsumer plastic waste is burned in the United States than is domestically recycled,” reports the Plastic Pollution Coalition, while the Center for International Environmental Law points out that producing and incinerating plastics will add more than 850 million metric tons of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere annually, “an amount equal to the emissions from 189 500megawatt coal power plants.”

That’s probably not what you’re thinking when you haul your bottles to the curb.