30 votes

Recycling was a marketing tool used to sell more plastic

11 comments

  1. thundergolfer
    (edited )
    Link
    The truth about this stings me, even us someone who has been cynical about our society for a long time. We got taught this stuff constantly as a kid, and I bought in. The recycling triangle was a...

    The truth about this stings me, even us someone who has been cynical about our society for a long time. We got taught this stuff constantly as a kid, and I bought in. The recycling triangle was a big part of the sustainability education we got through primary and secondary school, part of coming to learn how we were maintaining a healthy community and a healthy planet. We'd watch all the educational videos, adapt to coloured bins, work hard to pick up and sort trash on Earth Day or whatever. Turns out it was basically a fucking scam.

    They showed us kids images of choking sea animals knowing that we'd care, and sold us a 'solution' which created even more death and degradation, all in the name of profit.

    The fact that no one in my childhood community figured out that it was all total bullshit is to me a pretty persuasive case for anti-Capitalist ideology. How did so many apparently sensible adults buy into a pseudo-solution that conveniently let everybody keep consuming ever more cheap plastic products? It's internalised consumer capitalism, which divorces the rich consumer from the labour and environment on which their consumption depends.

    /endofseething


    The Intercept has good articles and videos on this topic as well.

    26 votes
  2. [9]
    skybrian
    Link
    I doubt there is any single truth to this. It seems more likely that some people were sincere and others, not so much. Why assume the perspective of the cynics is the only correct one?

    I doubt there is any single truth to this. It seems more likely that some people were sincere and others, not so much. Why assume the perspective of the cynics is the only correct one?

    4 votes
    1. [8]
      thundergolfer
      Link Parent
      Who is assuming the cynics are totally correct here? Just look at the evidence. Consider that miserable rate of plastics recycling against the marching global increase in plastics production....

      Who is assuming the cynics are totally correct here? Just look at the evidence.

      The vast majority of the 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic ever produced — 79 percent — has ended up in landfills or scattered all around the world. And as for those plastic shopping bags the kids were hoping to contain: Less than 1 percent of the tens of billions of plastic bags used in the U.S. each year are recycled.

      Consider that miserable rate of plastics recycling against the marching global increase in plastics production.

      There probably are people that are sincerely attempting to fight climate change and global plastics pollution with recycling programs, but when exactly is the recycling process going to arrest the influx of plastics into landfill, oceans, and the general environment? Next year 🤞? 2050? 2100?

      By 2050, it's estimated the global production of plastic will triple. As the oil and gas industry — which provides the source materials for plastics — faces a future of declining demand for fuel, it has turned to other markets.

      Expected to triple. What theoretical model of the world looks at the last 30 years of plastics pollution and thinks we're on track to finally solve this recycling thing and not further condemn ecosystems to degradation?

      The cynics actually have a coherent theory of why the process is failing. What's the theory of the believers, at least those not paid directly by plastics companies or oil and gas corporations?

      10 votes
      1. [7]
        skybrian
        Link Parent
        I don't dispute that plastics recycling isn't working very well, and for some companies, it was a "marketing tool." But it doesn't follow that everyone or even most people working on plastic...

        I don't dispute that plastics recycling isn't working very well, and for some companies, it was a "marketing tool." But it doesn't follow that everyone or even most people working on plastic recycling thought of it as only a marketing tool, just because some people did.

        Someone finds some evidence that some companies thought of it as a marketing tool, and the conclusion is that's all it ever was, and the perspectives of people who really tried to make it work are ignored. This is too cynical. It failed, so nobody really tried?

        4 votes
        1. [5]
          Comment deleted by author
          Link Parent
          1. [3]
            ohyran
            Link Parent
            I guess its different depending on where you live? I mean I live in a place that imports garbage because we've run out. Recycling of plastic is a huge chunk of that garbage-economy and our own...

            I guess its different depending on where you live?

            I mean I live in a place that imports garbage because we've run out. Recycling of plastic is a huge chunk of that garbage-economy and our own plastic is biodegradable (basically its not so much plastic as its complex carbs doing wizard things in a lab). Biodegradable plastic is not the best as its sort of different, you can't produce ten thousand spoons of it and keep them for a decade for example.

            You can buy a plastic shopping bag - but then you also pay the tax for it. So a plastic shopping bag costs about a US dollar, which is why most use reusable shopping bags (and the state run booze shop provides shipping boxes to lug your stuff away in).
            Even the worst and shittiest plastic is "energy renewable" - a fancy way of saying "burning the shit out of it" - and as long as there is some basic recycling done the emissions from that is ahead of the curve of the Paris Agreement (had the system of emission control explained to me once and its basically some sort of magic using "wet filters" that somehow provide energy on their own). The core issue with that being the small base of ash and filter rests, the ash being recycleable as gravel replacement in construction and as some sort of naturegas replacement (again don't ask me how) and that is minimized through user recycling. The more things like metal, batteries, plastics etc are separated at the start the less ash and filter-slag is produced.

            The core problems of course is that no matter what you do, you still produce slag and its an energy cost which makes it relevant to get even more energy out of the garbage, or through other sources.
            Our energy consumption is escalating to a point where its almost impossible to keep up. As coal etc are banned we either need to open nuclear reactors (which obviously isn't ideal since its just pushing a problem ahead of us), make batter renewable energy sources or figure out how to cut energy consumption.

            Paris Accord or no Paris Accord its still growing.

            My point being that its possible to get out of the plastic issue and recycling, when its part of a larger chain makes absolute sense and does work AND cuts down on oil dependency and while cynicism is a good reaction at times - its not impossible to get to that state.

            (I haven't seen six-pack rings since I was a small child or in movies - are there still places that have them?)

            2 votes
            1. [2]
              patience_limited
              Link Parent
              Burning plastic from current sources is carbon-positive. The vast majority of plastic material is still derived from fossil fuels, accounting for about 3% of petroleum production. The best...

              Burning plastic from current sources is carbon-positive. The vast majority of plastic material is still derived from fossil fuels, accounting for about 3% of petroleum production.

              The best strategy for plastic "recycling" (if it's mixed plastic that can't be reused as feedstock) is to make it into durable structural materials like architectural bricks, or rebury it for carbon capture.

              2 votes
              1. ohyran
                Link Parent
                True - but the end result was "better than keeping it, possible to do without getting outside of the Paris Accords and avoiding it being dumped elsewhere" so meta-wise I thought the assumption was...

                True - but the end result was "better than keeping it, possible to do without getting outside of the Paris Accords and avoiding it being dumped elsewhere" so meta-wise I thought the assumption was that it was the best option.

                The structural material is part of it since the filters still get reused.

                2 votes
          2. skybrian
            Link Parent
            I agree that consumers were misled, though in part it's about them wanting to believe and cities trying to make it happen. I suspect there were scientists and engineers trying to make it work,...

            I agree that consumers were misled, though in part it's about them wanting to believe and cities trying to make it happen. I suspect there were scientists and engineers trying to make it work, though, and this story isn't getting told because nobody looked into it and it's hard to research.

            Here is how I expect things to go with new technologies: universities put out press releases trying to make new research sound relevant, with scientists guessing that maybe it could be commercialized in five years. Sometimes, people start new technology companies to try to commercialize a new technique, and they put up websites saying how great their technology is, but don't talk about all the technical problems remaining to be solved. Either the company eventually figures it out, or they don't and fail. Or they sort of make it work, but with a lot of limitations.

            It's likely that there's a fair bit of lying going here, but in part it's because whether or not new technologies succeed is uncertain and people are optimistic, along with a fair bit of "fake it until you make it" (or at least, don't talk candidly about the challenges) and an assumption that new technologies start out kind of crappy but gradually improve.

            Also, with plastics recycling, cities roll it out, there are businesses that pay for plastic (or were for a while), and cities don't ask too many questions so long as someone takes it. For a while it mostly went to China.

            But I don't know the full story for recycling. I'm just hoping someone tells it properly, and I'm skeptical of the implication of a top-down conspiracy so I push back on that.

            2 votes
        2. [2]
          thundergolfer
          Link Parent
          I'm not at all saying that no one tried, clearly a lot of people tried a lot. But that does not stop it from being a bad-faith pseudo-solution from the start, which served it's main purpose of...

          It failed, so nobody really tried?

          I'm not at all saying that no one tried, clearly a lot of people tried a lot. But that does not stop it from being a bad-faith pseudo-solution from the start, which served it's main purpose of being a way to increase plastics sales, or rather, stop them decreasing.

          There's an apt saying. "Don't show me what you care about, show me your balance sheet and I'll tell you what you care about." If corporations really cared about the impact of their plastics pollution they'd have fixed it with the very recycling-based solution they pushed through their lobbying groups. But that's not what happened because they don't care. Coca-Cola makes billions in profit a year while their plastics pollution is considered a public and consumer problem.

          Of course you could say I'm oversimplifying, but this story sounds a lot more credible and useable than "it was the right idea, but x, y, and z went a little bit wrong along the way. Let's go with tweaking this and that and try again next year."

          5 votes
          1. skybrian
            Link Parent
            There isn’t a single balance sheet though. Some companies make and sell products and entirely different companies handle waste disposal and recycling, often in different countries. Most of the...

            There isn’t a single balance sheet though. Some companies make and sell products and entirely different companies handle waste disposal and recycling, often in different countries. Most of the supply chain and waste disposal chain can assume that someone else is doing their part of the job. It’s convenient to think so. This outsourcing of responsibility, dispersed across a partly-capitalist ecosystem, is a big part of the problem.

            The service that consumers see is that they put stuff in the blue bin and someone takes it away, and they are told they did the right thing. Similarly for the next steps of the chain, pickup and distribution. As long as someone is paying for recycling, it’s assumed that they must be doing something with it, until nobody will pay for it anymore. And then, it still has to go somewhere. Stop taking the recycling and people will complain a lot. Judging by behavior, taking it away is a lot more important than where it actually goes. Sending stuff to the landfill is what happens after a recycling program fails but nobody wants to tell the voters, so it remains in place as a zombie. This can be justified at first because it seems to be temporary, until the market picks up again.

            To partly dismantle a government recycling program would require political leadership for a thankless task. It is like declaring bankruptcy, except there are no creditors to force it to happen, so it doesn’t.

            Taking stuff away is visible and where it goes is hidden. This is a structural problem with all waste disposal. It’s the reason illegal dumping is profitable if you don’t get caught. But the same structure applies to donating stuff at Goodwill or Salvation Army. Maybe the clothing goes to the local store or Africa or the landfill, and who cares as long as they take it and you get a receipt for your taxes. The receipt is blank and that’s part of the corruption.

            The structural problem with waste is partly solved by having laws and an EPA to go after people, but they only do so much. Their job is to keep waste out of the environment since this is much more important than making sure recycling gets recycled.

            I guess I’m cynical too but there is a different structure to it. Failure happens due to the interaction of many bad incentives in a complicated system and lack of attention and leadership needed to fix it. Some of the lack of attention is because there are other, more important problems.

            3 votes