The Curious Introvert
A weekly podcast covering societal taboos & cultural blind spots. Join host Meredith Hackwith Edwards as she deep dives with curiosity & nuance into philosophy, society & culture with expert guests.
Episodes frequently feature philosophers, researchers, historians & journalists.
The Curious Introvert
Ep. 353: Recycling: Have We been SCAMMED?!
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Who convinced us that the fate of the world rests on our personal recycling habits? Does it even make a difference?
Melissa Valliant serves as the communications director at Beyond Plastics, a nationwide environmental advocacy group.
In this episode, Melissa shares how recycling isn't just imperfect, but a decades-old PR strategy engineered by the same fossil fuel, petrochemical, and consumer goods giants that profit from plastic production. You’ll hear the war origins of the plastics boom, who quietly bankrolled the Keep America Beautiful campaign & the logistical reasons that only 5-6% of everything you carefully sort actually makes it to recycling. She also covers the real bottom line on what will move the needle as well as how to keep your family healthy from the chemicals leaching from plastic.
If you liked this episode, you’ll also like episode 140: CAN HAIR SAVE THE WORLD? OIL, OTTERS & HAIR MATS
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2:17 – Plastic's Wartime Origins
6:56 – Keep America Beautiful's Secret Founders
8:35 – Only 6% Actually Gets Recycled
11:48 – The Chasing Arrows Con
12:48 – The Gar-Barge That Woke Us Up
14:29 – Deconstructing a Recycling Religion
17:39 – Are Bottle Caps Recyclable
19:01 – Wish-Cycling and Corporate Gaslighting
21:11 – California's Plastic Bag Loophole
23:02 – When Companies Fake Caring
26:55 – Busting Starbucks' Recycling Claims
29:07 – Advanced Recycling Isn't Advanced
31:06 – Proving Environmental Racism
33:06 – Exxon Sued Over Recycling Lies
34:38 – Would Banning Plastic Backfire
38:18 – Industry-Funded Studies Exposed
42:56 – The Human Health Turn
45:24 – Kicking Plastic Out of Schools
46:37 – The Secret Fourth R
47:55 – Rotisserie Chickens and Leaching Heat
50:34 – Real Swaps for Your Kitchen
53:57 – How to Deprogram Yourself
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If you grew up in the 80s or the 90s, you were told that you were the difference maker for the planet. Remember Captain Planet? His slogan was literally, the power is yours. And so we picked up litter and dutifully sorted our trash to be recycled. It became a ritual, and that made us feel good, especially as more disposable products and online shopping came on the scene. Recycling became a redemptive practice for all our consumerism sins. But what if it was all a lie? In the US, 60% of those carefully sorted bottles and boxes go straight to the landfill. And plastic production? Globally, the annual plastic production and use is set to increase by 170% from 2020 to 2040. Turns out much of the recycling message we've internalized is marketing. My next guest graduated Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School of Communications with plans for journalism and a heart for conservation. She serves as the communications director at Beyond Plastics, a nationwide environmental advocacy group. And today she's going to set us straight on who convinced us that we, the general public, were solely responsible for the fate of the planet as we ask the question, is recycling a scam? This is the Curious Introvert Podcast with me, Meredith. Around here, we explore taboo questions and societal blind spots. Please help me welcome the woman determined to help policymakers prioritize the planet and people over industry profits, Earth Advocate and industry realist, Melissa Valiant. Thanks for being here. Thank you so much for having me on. I gotta say, I'm gonna need therapy after this, though, because in researching all of this stuff, like I'm not sure if I'm ready for my 90s like childhood to collapse. Captain Planet, the Crying Indian. Do you remember the commercial with the drowning fish in the fishbowl? I don't remember that one.
SPEAKER_00I do remember the crying Indian, and I absolutely remember Captain Planet. I grew up on my Captain Planet, which also promoted plastics recycling. We have absolutely been duped from a very young age.
SPEAKER_02I know. Okay, so let's start with the history. How have we been duped? Who convinced us that the fate of the planet is resting on our recycling habits?
SPEAKER_00Sure. Okay, so let's go back in history a little bit. Plastic was invented in 1907. It was called Bacolite, but it didn't enter, you know, consumer products until late 1930s, 1940, basically during World War II, because they realized that they could use plastic for things like weapons and planes, helmets. So there was this huge boom in plastic production during World War II because of that. It increased by 300%.
SPEAKER_02Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_00Yes, huge. And then we entered what is called the era of quote, throw away living in the 1950s and 1960s. And that's when single-use plastic really hit the market. In the 1950s, there's actually a very famous photograph from Life magazine of this family throwing up their hands in celebration with all of this single-use plastic raining down on them. Oh my gosh. And the whole idea was, you know, celebrating convenience that you didn't have to necessarily wash your dishes afterward. You could just throw them away and go watch I Love Lucy after dinner instead of doing dishes.
SPEAKER_02Okay, I have to pause at this moment because I did not expect, I don't know what to call it, but like, you know how in the 1950s there was like this big push to put women back in the homes. You know what I mean? Like we had gone into the factories and done all things. And so there was like this societal cultural shift to be like, no, let's put women back in the house. And and and that's kind of where we get this like the trad wife aesthetic from. Right. And a lot of the products during that time were marketed for the convenience of housewives. Oh, look, this gadget in your kitchen will make your life easier. And so it's almost like from the beginning of the history of plastics, almost the beginning. I didn't realize it was 1907. Holy cow. But like as we know it in more recent history, it it overlaps with women and our buying habits. 100%.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. The 1950s, women were just looking for ways to make their lives easier. And of course, that's when Tupperware, the famous Tupperware brand, also came onto the market, and they started storing their food in those plastic containers. Which, by the way, you should switch to some Pyrex now. Yes. So yeah, around the 1960s, people started realizing that there were some consequences to all of this plastic use. And it was littering streets, it was being left in parks, it was being found in the ocean and waterways, and people started complaining. And the plastics industry got under a little bit of pressure for this. So they actually, it turns out, knew as early as the 1970s that plastics recycling would not handle plastic pollution, at least not to a scale that was realistic. So, in order to keep regulators off their back, they poured millions of dollars into ad campaigns aimed at the public and aimed at convincing the public that this was a problem created by consumers that only consumers could fix by recycling more effectively. And thus the lie began. And here we are in 2026, where I feel like the public is just starting to wake up to the truth behind this. So who is they? They would be a few different industries, including the fossil fuel industry. Little science lesson: plastic is made from fossil fuels, which is why it's also a huge part of the climate problem, as well as the plastic pollution problem. And then also petrochemical companies, and those are the ones that supply the chemicals that are additives for your plastic products and make it flexible or certain colors or flame retardant. And then also the consumer goods companies that are using this plastic in excess for packaging and other pieces of their products.
SPEAKER_02So all three of those departments, if you will, they were they like, you know, make this a movie in my head. And so were they coalescing together? Like, how shall we deceive the public? Was it really that coordinated, or is this more of like an opportunistic grab?
SPEAKER_00So around the 1960s, when I mentioned that there was starting to be public pressure about all this pollution, a lot of the major plastic companies joined together in different coalitions and groups, including Keep America Beautiful, which was behind the crying Indian ad you mentioned that put that pressure on consumers and put the blame on consumers for the pollution problem. That organization was founded by Coca-Cola and Pepsi Co., as well as Philip Morris and maybe one other. So, to give you an idea, like these are the big mega corporations behind a lot of the duping that has happened as early as the 1970s.
SPEAKER_02So was Keep America Beautiful a front for all of the I don't know, propaganda?
SPEAKER_00It was essentially part of this distraction campaign so that they could keep regulators off of their backs because believe it or not, plastic bans were being talked about as early as the 1980s.
SPEAKER_01Whoa.
SPEAKER_00So these companies were coming together to find ways to prevent those from becoming more popular. And recycling was their way to do that. Recycling was their smoke and mirrors to say, look, we've got this under control. We've got plastics recycling. All you all need to do is to make sure that you put the right things in the bin. And then we won't have pollution in our streets and our waterways. But the truth is that in the United States today, only five to six percent of plastic is being recycled. And that plastics recycling rate has never even made it to the double digits.
SPEAKER_02Oh my gosh. Okay. So when I hear only five or six percent of plastics in the United States is recycled, this is how this is how deep my own brainwashing goes. I'm like, yeah, we suck. Humans suck, but but like that's not what you're saying. You're saying that there's, you know, what, seven different types of plastic, and only how many are actually recyclable? Right. Okay, so it's not your fault. Good. Thank you. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Not that part of my therapy session. No, the problem with plastics recycling is that plastic is an inherently a non-recyclable material, and that is primarily because of all of those chemicals I mentioned that are put into plastic to give it certain properties. So there are about 16,000 chemicals found in plastic. About 4,200 of those are known to be harmful to the environment and or human health. There are thousands more that haven't even been studied for their safety. And depending on what plastic product you're talking about, it has a different combination of those chemicals plus plastic polymers, and you know, there are different colors too of plastic. So, what makes plastic so inherently non-recyclable is that there are so many different combinations of chemicals, polymers, and colors, and they all need to be sorted. They can't be recycled together. And that is economically just not feasible. There's no way for facilities to sort through all of those different types of plastic and actually recycle each one separately. So numbers one and two plastic, you can usually see the numbers on the bottom with the little chasing arrows symbol, are typically recyclable in U.S. municipalities. Municipalities do vary in what they can recycle, but most of the time, numbers one and two are recyclable. The rest, three through seven, usually forget about it. It's very unlikely. So the problem isn't you. The problem is that in order for plastic to be plastic, for it to be bendy and durable and the colors that we want, it it can't really be recycled. There's just too many different types.
SPEAKER_02Okay. So I heard that plastic is a plan B for like big oil companies. Is that true? And if it is, what does that even mean?
SPEAKER_00So yes and no. So the plastics industry and fossil fuel industry rely on plastics as a consistent profit maker. They know that they can continue putting it into products, often unnecessarily, and it will sell. They are trying to make sure that they have that going forward because we are starting to make a shift societally away from fossil fuels for things like transportation to renewable alternatives. This way they have plastic as a consistent money maker that's not going anywhere while this societal shift kind of happens.
SPEAKER_02Okay. And the chasing arrows, why put the chasing arrows on bottles or products that are plastics three through seven if they mostly can't be recycled? So frustrating, right?
SPEAKER_00I mean, how is that legal? So the plastic resin codes, which is what those numbers are, with the chasing arrow symbol, were put on plastic products. I want to say back in like the 1970s or 1980s. And the intention was actually good. The companies were doing that to try to make this simpler for recycling facilities that needed to sort through those recyclables. Like I mentioned, it has to be sorted before it actually gets recycled. But the public took that to mean that every product with those chasing arrows was recyclable, which is not true. When the industry realized that deception was happening, they kind of leaned into it rather than correcting the misinformation. How unlike them. And now we're here. Yes.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Okay. Well, there's been some other, I hate to say happy accidents, but for the people who are benefiting the most from plastic production at this scale, we'll call it happy accident. There was some sort of barge off of the East Coast, right? That kept going back and forth because it was full and there was nowhere to put the trash. And then that sort of accelerated the whole idea of we can't just keep throwing things away.
SPEAKER_00Yes. I actually had never heard of this until you brought it up to me. Uh so congratulations on finding my blind spot because I hadn't really found it before. I also love that they were calling it the garage. Yeah. Yeah. Clever. Yeah. But yeah, it was an eye-opening moment, I guess, in realizing that we don't have an endless supply of places to put this trash and it's accumulating rapidly as the rate of plastic production increases rapidly. This problem became even worse when China decided that they weren't taking our trash anymore. And kudos to them. The United States had been shipping a lot of their recyclables to other countries, especially in Asia and especially China, because it was cheaper for them to deal with it than it was for us to deal with it at home. And so, especially since China decided, hey, we're not taking your garbage, it has been a wake-up call to the United States and other Western countries that, oh my gosh, we have all of this trash now and nowhere to put it. What are we going to do?
SPEAKER_01Hmm. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And that was recent. That was like 2018. Right. I think it's bad enough that companies, you know, convinced us that like it's okay to buy so much plastic because after all, it gets recycled. But it also has created, and I feel like you'll feel this a lot because of the space that you work in, a kind of religious fervor around the idea of recycling. Because I didn't know any of this until researching for this episode that like we have been duped. And as I've, as I've disclosed, I'm still like trying to untangle what do they call that? Religious deconstruction. Like I'm serious, Melissa. I feel like I'm deconstructing a religion in my head. Like you told me Santa Claus isn't real. You know, my trash isn't thrown away. Recycling doesn't magically make it pop up and become reincarnated into another product that I can use without guilt or shame. And then I feel like we, the general public, kind of give side eye to people that like just throw away things or choose plastic over paper at the grocery store. And it becomes an infighting among all of us when really there's these larger puppeteers at work, which is so dramatic sounding. It sounds over the top.
SPEAKER_00It is dramatic though. And that is exactly the intention. These companies want us to be fighting over the insignificant details like plastics recycling and straws, whether or not we're doing it right and straws. But like the truth is they just need to stop producing and using so much plastic. What I always say is that plastics recycling is like trying to sweep up leaves on a windy day.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It's pointless because the wind's going to keep coming and messing with your leaves. Or another great analogy is if you walk into the bathroom and your tub is overflowing with water, what's the first thing you're going to do? It's not grab a mop, it's turning off the faucet. We need these companies to stop producing so much plastic before we can even try to imagine what to do with the plastic that's already produced. In the meantime, I encourage people to continue recycling number one and number two plastic, as well as their paper and glass and aluminum, because all of those materials are very recyclable. And I think it's important for people to realize what recyclability means. Materials like aluminum and glass can be recycled infinitely. So if you take a soda can, that can become another soda can over and over again until the end of time. If you take a plastic bottle and recycle that, it can maybe recycled once before it loses its value so much that the next time you want to recycle it, it's just going to become carpet or textiles like clothing, which obviously are not recyclable. So then that product will ultimately end up in a landfill, an incinerator, or in the environment. So even when you can effectively recycle plastic, it's very short-lived. It's kind of just delaying the inevitable rather than solving the problem.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And the plastic caps on bottles, are they recycled? I heard they're not recyclable. That just the bottle itself. And then that made me think of every airport ever. How all of those bins are filled with Coke bottles that are both the cap and the bottle. And I'm thinking, okay, is that just going to the landfill then? Because it's contaminated? Totally.
SPEAKER_00And it doesn't, it doesn't help that it's different, you know, there are different rules for different municipalities. So it's always important to check your municipality to see exactly what they can recycle. But it doesn't help that there isn't a standardized recycling process across the United States. Once again, though, as a reminder, even if there were, we still wouldn't be able to recycle the vast majority of the plastic that we use in our everyday lives because there just isn't a way to sort through all of the different combinations of polymers and colors and chemicals.
SPEAKER_02But I think the American identity of individualism really works against us here because we really have that cowboy mentality of I will make the difference. It's up to me. It's sort of right. Like it's frontier thinking that is so hard to shake. It's it's almost like the corporations are the kings we left. You know what I mean? And we we just never realized that we do have a monarchy, but it's corporations.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I don't think gaslighting was a word in the 1970s, but the fossil fuel and plastics and petrochemical industries definitely pioneered gaslighting.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00And I there's actually a word for what you were talking about with recycling too. It's called wish cycling, where recycling was really not designed to solve the problem, but to make us feel better, right? So wish cycling is putting those things in the recycling bin that probably aren't going to be recycled, but we just feel like a better person because we did it. But ultimately, it's not helping the problem. I would say that doesn't mean that people, individuals, can't be empowered. It just means instead of the cowboy mentality, take the democracy, the American democracy mentality, and get more involved in your own community and try to even pass local policies that reduce the amount of plastic being produced and used. So if your county doesn't have a plastic bag ban, honestly, most of the time those bans happen because people in that community said, you know what, enough is enough.
SPEAKER_02How do we move forward with that in a savvy way, however? Because, uh, for example, I have a friend in New Jersey, and wherever he lives, there's a single-use plastic ban. He gets his groceries delivered like I do. And okay, we can't use single-use plastic. So the grocery store uses these canvas bags, and I'm using heavy air quotes on canvas because actually they're made of plastic and they're not reusable. It turns out they're pretty flimsy and they break apart pretty quickly. And so he, you know, got on social and was like, guys, I'm all for plastic bands, but you just swapped one plastic for another, and now we have this other plastic, you know, we're not leaving it out on the porch for pickup for our next delivery, which would be a cool idea. And so it's like, okay, now we are all patting ourselves on the back for that, but that is not a solution either. Right. Is I mean, is there a way that we can navigate through these waters without accidentally being manipulated or even like tricking ourselves into thinking we're headed in the right direction?
SPEAKER_00I mean, that's why organizations like Beyond Plastics, the organization I'm part of, exist. It's to make sure that when these policies get passed, there aren't these really problematic loopholes within those policies. So California was actually the first state to pass a plastic bag ban. And we give California props for that. They took one for the team, did this first, but because they did it first, we had to learn from their mistakes. And one of those, which they're they're amending now, but one of those was that there was a loophole for thicker plastic bags that they could then call reusable, even though they weren't very reusable. There are ways to write that policy in a way that prevents that loophole, and we're seeing Those policies be implemented increasingly in states now. So that wrong is being righted, thankfully. But it is tricky. I mean, we're going, it's it's it's a David versus Goliath battle, really, because these mega corporations, Dow chemical, you know, fossil fuel companies like Dow and Shell, and then these big consumer brands like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, they have so much money and so much power and influence that they are preventing a lot of the policy progress across the United States. We'll see lobbyists and representatives from the American Chemistry Council at even small town meetings about single-use plastic bag bands. I mean, they are everywhere. So that's why this progress is taking so long. And it's also why the United States is so far behind a lot of other developed countries. A big part of that is because we have some of the largest fossil fuel companies headquartered here.
SPEAKER_02What's your take on when companies take on a philanthropic project? Like it's a whole branch of their business. This is another the sustainability division. Uh-huh. Yeah. This is another kind of a topic that I'm pursuing for a different episode about toxic charity and the concept of uh philanthropy. Does it actually do good, et cetera, et cetera? But it applies here because we see this a lot. Like do doing good by doing well, or whatever the hell their slogan is. But it's like basically we can make money and do good. And on the surface, that's uh that's an easy yes. But it becomes like marketing. I mean, the Dawn ducks are just like a prime example, right? Like I have met so many people, like it makes my eye Twitch thinking about it, who are like, oh, I love Dawn, blue Dawn because of the ducks. And I'm like, uh, yeah, I mean, uh some marketing though, you know what I mean? And so when we see these companies that are like, our, you know, manufacturing plant is green certified and da-da-da. Like they're spending money to tell us how good they are, but it works and it makes us want to keep buying. It it also relieves our guilt from Amazon priming ourselves whatever it is that they're selling.
SPEAKER_00There definitely should be more regulation of marketing terms. And I would say always approach those kind of claims with a healthy amount of skepticism and do as much of your own homework as you can. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot of regulation around some of the marketing terms that companies are using around plastic and plastic alternatives. For example, a lot of restaurants I have noticed have started using compostable, and I'm using air quotes here, compostable plastic straws for their drinks. And when I say I'd actually prefer not to have a straw, they'll say, oh, but it's compostable plastic, so it's fine. It's fine. And I'm like, well, actually, I don't want to get into a preachy situation here with this poor bartender who's trying to serve a bunch of people. But those compostable plastic straws are typically ending up in landfills where they are breaking apart at the same speed as a typical plastic straw. And that is because there aren't really any regulations around the use of labels like compostable and biodegradable when it comes to plastics. So anybody can slap that onto a product and say it's compostable, and people will automatically think, oh, cool, well, that just means it'll biodegrade and break down no matter where it ends up. Well, no, it needs to be sorted separately from the rest of the waste stream, even though it's probably put in a trash can with everything else at that restaurant and no one's sorting through it. And it would have to go to a very specific industrial composting facility, of which there are very few in the United States. So I would say skepticism always, I'm not saying that there aren't great alternatives or that some companies aren't doing the right thing or making some good shifts, but approach with skepticism and also these big companies like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo will often make these big claims of, oh, we're going to go all reusable by 2040. If you see one of those, know that it's likely for the PR, it tends to make a lot of headlines. It makes the company look good, it makes you feel okay about buying from them. But there are reports on this. If you actually do the research, most of the claims from those big companies like that have not actually come into fruition. They just kind of get brushed under the rug and everyone forgets about it after all of the good headlines, and we don't see any return on those promises.
SPEAKER_02Your uh organization recently did some investigating with Starbucks. Uh, can you tell that story?
SPEAKER_00Yes. So Starbucks has been claiming that its plastic cold cups, which are number five plastic, also known as polypropylene, are recyclable. They sell millions of these cups. And unfortunately, polypropylene, as I mentioned, number five plastic, is not typically recycled. There are only a handful, you can count on one hand, the number of facilities in the United States that actually recycle polypropylene. So we put these claims to the test and we dropped trackers into their plastic cups. And we put those plastic cups into their in-store recycling bins in Starbucks stores in different parts of the country, and none ended up at a recycling facility. There were 53 trackers, 36 provided data, zero went to a recycling facility. And what was their comment? We did not get a formal statement from Starbucks. We actually reached out to them before the report was released, hoping to get a response, but never heard back. We mailed them and also emailed, nothing bounced, so we can only assume they received it, but we we didn't receive any comment from them. Okay. And a heads up that in case you're wondering what actually happened to those cups, most of them went to landfills, which is where most of our plastic waste does go. 16 of the tracked cups went to landfills, nine went to incinerators, eight were last detected at a waste transfer facility, which is basically just a stop before going to a landfill, and three ended up at a material recycling facility, which is where they sort things before they go somewhere else.
SPEAKER_02Well, hey there. Since you seem to be enjoying this episode so far, double check that you've hit the follow button on your podcast listening app and subscribe on YouTube. And to join my free private Facebook group, search MFR Curious Insiders on Facebook or click the link in the show notes. Okay, back to the show. So, what about this advanced recycling that is kind of floating around? The idea that, oh, well, that was the recycling of yesteryear, and now we're moving into a more sophisticated method.
SPEAKER_00This is part two of what we've already been through with the plastics industry. Okay. So as we've been talking about mechanical recycling and how this was a lot of smoke and mirrors, this is just the same thing. I think the industry is realizing that the public is waking up to the deception that is plastics recycling. And so they need another distraction to word off these policies and regulations that would prevent them from making so much plastic. So, chemical recycling, so-called chemical recycling, which they like to call advanced recycling because it sounds so magical and advanced. It is neither advanced nor recycling. It has been around for decades and it has been failing for decades. And most of the time, what happens is this process is using high heat and pressure and sometimes chemicals to take plastic and turn it into oil that can sometimes be used to create new plastic products, but more often than not, just gets burned for more energy. It has a lot of hazardous waste problems associated with it. It has a lot of air pollution associated with it. And like just about any facility associated with the plastics industry, it is typically located in what's known as an environmental justice community, which is a low-income community and or a community of color. That's intentional because these companies know that those communities have fewer resources and power to fight back. So they're the ones who end up suffering the brunt of the health impacts from plastic waste as well as plastic production.
SPEAKER_02Do we have uh evidence that these companies are sitting around in their villain boardroom going, where shall we put the advanced recycling facilities? Let's put them in communities where people are unlikely to have like grassroots movements against us. Do we have a paper trail? I mean, because I'm with you. I'm I am very likely to believe that this is the case, but I'm trying my best to like hear voices in my head of the most cynical listener asking, like, okay, okay, is that is that how do we know though? Do we have evidence of what is often called environmental racism?
SPEAKER_00I think you would have to look at the percentage of these facilities that tend to be located in environmental justice communities. And it is, as I mentioned, the majority of them. Beyond Plastics actually did a report on this back in 2023, and we profiled all of the chemical recycling facilities in the United States, of which there were 11 at the time. By the way, we are now down to seven. So that's how effective this process is, quote unquote effective. That was quick. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, the the absolute fact is that most of the time these end up in environmental justice communities. I guess you would have to ask the companies themselves why.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, because that's my question. Because I was thinking, okay, well, like, you know, maybe rural communities that there's more, the more land to build these facilities or communities that are more industrial zoned, you know, then we also see like quote unquote affordable housing in these areas too. So that could be another reason. So that's why I was kind of wondering like, do we actually know that one of the strong motives are that we will, we as a company will not receive pushback from these communities because they're too busy trying to make ends meet? Fair question. Either way, it is a problem. Yeah. It really is. Yeah, it is a problem because that's totally messed up. And wasn't there like a lawsuit against the advertising for advanced recycling or something? Was that California again?
SPEAKER_00Yes. Thank you for bringing that up. Um, so the California Attorney General, Rob Bonta, is actually suing ExxonMobil for not only its plastic pollution, but also its lies around plastics recycling. And that includes its deception around quote-unquote chemical recycling or advanced recycling. If there are any listeners who are really nerding out about this, I recommend you check out the lawsuit. It's like a book, it's hugely long, but the content is just chock full of stats and history and facts about how deceptive this has actually become. So if there are any people nerding out about this, I recommend that you check out the full lawsuit from California Attorney General Rob Bonta against ExxonMobil. It is just chock full of history and stats and facts about how deceptive the claims about plastics recycling, including so-called chemical recycling, have become and have been throughout history. We are actually at Beyond Plastics encouraging other attorneys general around the country to follow suit with Attorney General Rob Bonta and also do similar lawsuits within their own states.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I wonder if this will become uh, you know, a Netflix special at some point where, you know, like a docudrama. You mentioned something about the advanced recycling causing more emissions, like the process was actually not a net benefit for the planet. I heard someone else, her name is uh Professor Kim Regaart, she's in the Netherlands. She said that if we were just to like ban plastics altogether, that the CO2 emissions would, quote, explode. I don't know what explode means, because of all the power it takes to create alternatives. Is that true in your knowledge? And is it necessary to have sort of an off-ramp for these major plastic players to go on so that we don't create economic or emissions shockwaves?
SPEAKER_00So chemical recycling is hugely inefficient. Actually, it releases more greenhouse gases than the actual production of plastic from scratch. So it's not even close. No. And most of the time, it doesn't even produce a new plastic product. So, as I mentioned, we profiled 11, all 11 constructed chemical recycling facilities in the United States in our report in 2023. And now there are only seven that are still operating. If those seven were all operating at full capacity, just to give you an idea, and most of them aren't operating at full capacity, but if they were, they would be handling less than 1% of our plastic waste and creating more of a climate problem in doing so than even the production of plastic from scratch. So this just is not a solution. I mean, there's very few positives about this. And again, it doesn't, it doesn't even touch the human health problem that is existing throughout plastic's entire life cycle, or the environmental justice problem that's existing throughout plastic's entire life cycle, or the fact that plastic production from the very beginning is emitting an enormous amount of greenhouse gases. That shocks people is we all know that flying is bad for the climate, right? A lot of people love to hate on billionaires for taking their private jets, you know, wherever they want to go. And plastic production actually emits five times more greenhouse gases than the entire aviation sector. Oh. So that's how big of a climate problem the plastic production problem is. And then we have the environmental impacts, the human health impacts, and the environmental justice impacts of plastic on top of all of that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So I think uh Professor Regart's point was like, if we cold turkeyed plastic and just went to alternatives, that that would not be a net positive. And I don't know anything about this, so I don't have skin in the game. I understand what you're saying. So my question was like, is that true? And if it is, do organizations like Beyond Plastic have like some sort of suggested off-ramp for these large corporations? Because for like, let's use Coca-Cola, for example, like if if tomorrow they were to stop all of their plastic production, there would be an economic impact from that for both them and certainly that they would pass along to us, the consumer. But she's saying that there would be an emissions impact of that. I'm assuming from the production of glass and the heat that it requires to recycle glass, which is a lot. It's a lot more than aluminum.
SPEAKER_00Yes. I'm glad you brought this up. So the industry loves to talk about this too, and they will point to very specific studies that sometimes are actually funded by the industry themselves. Oh. So that's another thing to look out for.
SPEAKER_02I swear, I can't have nothing nice around here. You know what I mean? Like I feel like whether it's big pharma, big plastic, I mean the food situation, it's like everywhere you turn, you think you're like, oh, now I have knowledge. I'm doing so good. And then you just get bitch slapped right back into your seat because I am the the study or the research that you you thought you were reading is is incorrect. And it just makes me. This is why people give up, honestly. And this is how my journey started with this whole thing. I know I told you this before we were recording, but I'll share for the class. Is my local municipality for years and I carefully sorted, girl, I laminated what for our municipality. I mean, talk about personal responsibility. I laminated that bitch. I hung her up. She had a spot on the real estate of our house walls so that we would check the bottom and of the container, make sure what we were doing is recycle. We rinsed those damn things out and found out that our municipality was not at all recycling them, that they would send a special truck to everyone's homes on a different day and took all that shit to the landfill. That's a very interesting. And then I was like, that's that's when I was like, okay, hmm, if this isn't true, what else isn't true? If Santa ain't real, let's talk about the Easter body.
SPEAKER_00Like, I know it's maddening. And you gotta hand it to these companies. They're great at PR. I kudos to the PR teams. But to go back to your question, the confusion there comes from the fact that a lot of those studies are only looking at one part of the life cycle of those different materials. And so they're not including the entire life cycle of plastic and how greenhouse gases are emitted from the very beginning of the process with fracking to the very end of the process. To give you an idea, if you had a single-use plastic water bottle that ended up in the ocean, when the sun starts hitting that plastic water bottle, methane actually is released. So it will continue releasing greenhouse gases as is just floating around in the ocean after consumer use. So a lot of times these studies aren't looking at the full scope of the problem. And they're also not incorporating the environmental harms that come with the fact that plastic is designed to last forever. So while something like paper will biodegrade in the environment, a plastic product is going to be lasting in the environment for centuries, if not longer. And that has huge implications for the planet in addition to its greenhouse gas emissions.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's true. I think more people are becoming aware of that health piece because that's where you're personally messing with us. You know, you're personally messing with our fertility, our ability to fight off cancer, all of those things. But you mentioned earlier that let's see if I can remember, there are 16,000 chemicals in plastic. Did I get it right now? I got it. Okay, and what 40? You passed the quiz. And 4300 of them are known to be 4,200. So you're close. Dang, I was so close. Okay, 4,200 are known to be unhealthy. I I heard that there are some grassroots efforts that have had success going this health route. And I'm wondering, do you think that is working because it's not political and it's not moral? Like, because when we use the word justice, we feel it. We feel when we are talking about this, and you and I and I'm having my therapy session with you, which you can bill me later. Like, I can't, yeah, I'll pay you later. I feel the word justice, like it, it's visceral, and I want to use that word. But when I use that word, it feels so strong to the people who don't give a shit that I think it backfires on me, like trying to get those other people to care. Right. But when you talk about babies having cancer and 20-year-olds who can't get pregnant, I wonder, is that the enemy that we should be hating together instead?
SPEAKER_00It's a good point. And I will say a lot of the science that's emerged about plastics, human health impacts has only come out in the past 10 years. And I've been in the plastics space for nearly 10 years. So I've watched this evolve from a primarily environmental issue to a human health issue as well. And that human health piece is helpful in discussing plastics impacts because though I will never understand it, there are people out there who did not care about Captain Planet growing. They did, they don't really care about the environment. And it has been useful reaching policymakers and certain factions of the public by talking about the human health impacts because, man, they are real. Man, they are scary. And like you said, nothing's more personal than human health. I mean, we are seeing the chemicals that we you were talking about that are in plastic. There are many that are carcinogens, there are endocrine disruptors, which Means it's messing with our hormones. Plastic has been linked to, or plastics chemicals has been linked to diabetes, infertility issues. A really great Netflix film came out this year called The Plastic Detox. I recommend everyone watch it, but that goes through the potential fertility issues associated with plastic, and it follows various couples that are having infertility issues that decide to go on a three-month plastic detox to see what it does to their fertility levels. I won't have any spoilers here, but I encourage you all to watch it. I think that this is a unifying piece of the plastic problem because no matter what side of the aisle you fall on politically, this is gonna affect you. And politically speaking, the Republican side, which tends to be less focused on the environment, does have the Make America Healthy Again movement that is actually aligned on some of these pieces. So the Make America Healthy Again movement is concerned about chemicals like phthalates and PFOS that are so frequently found in our plastic products. They don't want those chemicals in their products or in their packaging or in their food or in their bodies. So the human health piece is uh definitely a unifying piece, I think, for people.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And I I was hearing that uh starting with kids is actually like that's working. I think I heard that there was some pockets of communities that successfully changed their school district policy of serving hot lunches on polystyrene trays. Have you heard of this? Yes. Okay, so like let's say someone listening, instead of spending all their free time making laminated signs and washing out their their plastic jars or whatever, they want to uh reallocate those energies to more grassroots pushes in the right direction. How would they help their school district discontinue the use of hot lunches served on polystyrene trays?
SPEAKER_00So you can absolutely do that. First of all, it is possible. Secondly, I would direct them to our website at beyondplastics.org slash actac. We actually have a lot of guides and fact sheets to empower individuals to make these kind of changes in their own institutions, including schools and churches and the like.
SPEAKER_02But the real unsexy answer to all of this from a personal perspective, right? Like, I mean, the real, real answer is corporations clean up your shit. But but in the meantime, the thing that we can do is consume less, right? I mean, but that's just refuse. Refuse. Ooh.
SPEAKER_00Because there's there's the three R's. Well, reduce, reuse, recycle, but then they don't use refuse. I feel like that's the secret fourth R that nobody talks about. So you don't have to take those plastic utensils when you get takeout at a restaurant. If you're picking up takeout, tell them you don't need them.
SPEAKER_02Well, the black ones are made out of like electronics. Oh, so gross. Oh, that kind of creeps me out. I don't know about that. And then, like, I know I'm I'm back to my therapy session. Sorry. But you know those black, those rotisserie chickens from the grocery store? Like, it's such veteran plastic. Like, I did not think about that, girl. We were like, oh, look how affordable this is. We can get this whole chicken and it's ready to go. And it comes in a black plastic tray at the bottom, a clear plastic, very thin dome. And then the whole thing is covered in like a really thin plastic bag, and then it's baked all day.
SPEAKER_00And it sits on that warmer all day in heat. And so, really important piece. I'm so glad you said that because we should go back to the human health piece for a second. It's really important to remember that microplastics and their chemicals can come out of packaging and enter your food and your body. When you add heat to the equation, it makes it so much worse. So, heat makes molecules move around a little more, which means that a lot of the chemicals that are in plastic can actually leach out of that plastic. So these carcinogens, those endocrine disruptors that I was talking about, those can then leach out of the plastic into your food. That can happen with or without heat, but with heat, it's just a recipe for disaster. You're going to have a higher amount of chemicals that come out of the plastic packaging into your food. So that's why it just makes me cringe when I see a chicken wrapped in plastic sitting on the heater all day. It's also why I'm really I'm very into home cooking and I've had to get rid of a lot of products that I used to use. One being a what's the name of it? It uses plastic to like vacuum seal your food in water, and then it keeps the like bath of water a certain temperature sous vide. Oh girl, you're you're like advanced. Um I have no idea what we're talking about. Made the best salmon of my life in this thing. And now I I can't use it because now I know I was just injecting my food with chemicals. So do not, for anyone listening to this, do not microwave your food in plastic. It's one of the worst possible things you can do. And I know we went on a tangent, so I'm not sure what the initial question was.
SPEAKER_02I think these this is important because uh part of what makes recycling so attractive is that we are in control of it. And in so much of our world, run by corporations, you know, the kings, we feel out of control. And so at least having agency with our health, it it not only has the very real impact of like, hey, you could be healthier, but it also makes us feel like we're in control. There is some catharsis there. So knowing to not pick up the rotisserie chicken, uh, don't do Melissa's fancy thing. And I do know that like don't cook your Thanksgiving turkey in a plastic bag. Yes. That is also a thing to like make it juicier. I yeah, I can give you more. Tell me, tell me.
SPEAKER_00So individuals can also reuse, obviously. So get a reusable bottle if you don't already have one. I also have a reusable thermos that I can take to coffee shops to get coffee so they're not putting it in a plastic container or a plastic lined cup, because even those paper cups have plastic liners in it.
SPEAKER_02Fun fact. What about silicone though? Because like I have a reusable, it's collapsible. It was in my early podcast days. I branded it. I was so cheesy, and then I gave it out as gifts. But but it's silicone. Is like medical grade silicone better? Oh, you want to say something? I can tell you're just about to burst.
SPEAKER_00It's not a total Debbie Downer moment because I do feel like I'm Debbie Downer from the SL skip very often in my career, but the jury's still out, is like the short answer to that question on silicone. There's just still a lot of science that needs to happen, and there are chemicals in that product as well. We just don't know. Personally, I would still opt for silicone over plastic. I do have like stasher bags at home that I use instead of um ziploc, single-use ziploc bags, because I can reuse them. I do hand wash them rather than put them in the dishwasher because, again, heat will make those chemicals come out of those materials faster and at higher quantities. So, yeah, but going back to reuse, there's lots of ways reusable bags, of course, stick to cotton, please, as we talked about before. Like, don't get the plastic reusable bags, get the cotton bags, stop using produce bags. I don't know why people use them. I think we've just been programmed to use them, but there's typically no need. The only time I have ever needed a produce bag is when I buy a ton of tomatillos for salsa verde. Again, I love cooking, and there's just too many of them to put them all individually in the cart. So I bring a mesh cotton produce bag on those grocery trips to get those. So there are like reusable swaps you can make. There are other swaps in the kitchen, where is which is a great place to start since this is where all your food is that's going to end up in your body. Don't use plastic cutting boards, stick to bamboo or wood, because every time you cut on those, little bits of plastic are coming off onto your food. Yeah, just try to look at your kitchen, especially in this new frame of mind of there are toxic chemicals on plastic, and what materials can I swap out some of these things for even progressively over time in order to protect myself?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I think that's smart. And it's an easy sell because we love Amazon priming ourselves to wellness.
SPEAKER_00I mean, it's well, you can also, and an even more sustainable way to do it is to go to goodwill. Um, you can get a lot of your products, you know, as consignments. So you're not actually purchasing a brand new product, but reusing something that is already out in the world.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I love that. Is there anything else that we can do to deprogram ourselves from the religious undertones of recycling and the industry messaging that is just left and right being rebranded and painted over to make us think it's something new and different and better and more accurate?
SPEAKER_00I would say don't get your environmental and human health facts from companies who are making a profit.
SPEAKER_02But how do we know? That's what I'm saying. Like, even the Netflix special, like, right when you said that, I was like, ooh, what if? I mean, this is like where you get cuckoo and you become one of those people. Right. You don't want to enter like conspiracy theorist territory. Exactly. Like, but it's true that certain industries will fund quote unquote documentaries because documentaries are notoriously convincing. The combination of sound design and music and you know, imaging and camera angles can really convince you of one thing or another depending on how it's produced. So, how do you know?
SPEAKER_00It is tricky. I'd say there are so many great reporters out there doing the work for you. And again, you do have to use your brain in deciding which outlets are actually producing the objective news. But yeah, I guess the other thing I could say is Beyond Plastics is also doing that work for you. And you can always get your information from us. We are not a for-profit organization. We are specifically doing our jobs for the benefit of the world and for the benefit of people. You can go to beyondplastics.org slash learn to find numerous fact sheets, countless fact sheets on just about anything you could ever wonder about plastic, including a new silicone fact sheet that we actually just produced recently. Oh, I love that. For you, Mary. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02Thank you, Doctor.
SPEAKER_00And there's a book, too, right? And a book, yes. The problem with plastic, how we can save ourselves and our planet before it's too late, was published in December. Uh, you can get that at bookstore.org or beyondplastics.org. Yeah, it covers everything about the issue from the history and how we got here to the false solutions like we've been talking about today, to the real solutions, uh, both policy and corporate and individuals.
SPEAKER_02I think that's where we really need the roadmap is through the policy, you know, starting with our local area and then moving outward from there. That's where we really need that support because we can all throw away our plastic boiled egg maker, which is literally what I'm thinking about right now. But it takes a little bit more strategy to do the other stuff. So thank you so much for existing and thank you. Thank you for this conversation. It's been really fun and uh I learned a lot.
SPEAKER_00Oh, thank you so much for having me on. I really enjoyed the conversation.
SPEAKER_02Thanks for listening. Since you've made it this far, I'd like to invite you to be a part of my private Facebook group. In there, I post content, I don't share anywhere else. You can talk to me directly, and I even do occasional giveaways. Search MFR Curious Insiders on Facebook or click the link in the show notes. If you liked this episode, you'll also like the one about how one organization is using hair to clean up the ocean. That's episode 140. And stay tuned next week when I talk with a naturopathic doctor about how cortisol could be your new best friend. Until then, keep it curious.