About a year ago, a team of scientists and researchers released a blistering, scathing attack on the plastics industry. No part of this industry was left untouched. The report accused the oil industry, petrochemical manufacturers, converters of plastics, plastic trade associations – the entire supply chain of plastics – of a massive cover-up.  

The document was published by The Center of Climate Integrity, and “empowered communities and elected officials with the knowledge and tools they need to hold oil and gas corporations accountable for the massive cost of climate change.” (Note that later in this column I will report on action by one state). The report is incredibly well documented, with countless footnotes and references that support their argument. The title, “The Fraud of Plastics Recycling,” criticizes every aspect of industry, including oil extraction, conversion of oil into monomers and polymers, into resin types, collection of plastic byproduct, mechanical and chemical (advanced) recyclers, and, in particular, trade actions that have aided and abetted the growth of plastics with inaccurate information and data on solutions for waste.  

The report begins with the development of polymers in the 50s and covers the formation of trade associations in the 60s and 70s, whose sole purpose, according to the report, was to embrace the positive aspects of plastic materials and the success of
recycling schemes.

This is the first of two columns that presents the case of inappropriate messaging by every part of the plastics industry and the “useless” efforts by the industry to create meaningful solutions. This first column examines the report and its accusations. The next column looks at the response by the industry.  

First off, the growth of the plastics industry has been nothing less than spectacular. We’ve come from ground zero in the early 50s to an estimated 35 to 50 million tons of production of plastics in 2023. Further, with manufacturing capacity being added, growth is anticipated to reach 60 million tons by 2035. This is per year, mind you, and here in the US. Along with this enormous growth is the continued development of resin technology. Both thermoplastic and thermoset developing formulations have allowed the industry to meet more and more demanding application requirements that support efficiencies, longer shelf life, and brand owner objectives. Obviously, there’s a “good” side to plastics.  That’s the positive contribution from the industry. But, the bad part is the “end of life.”  Sound familiar?!  

The report says “the majority of plastics cannot be recycled,” never have been and never will be. The report documents that petrochemical companies created and perpetuated recycling as a false solution to plastic waste management. Think about your own experience. In my case, after 55 years in the recycling business, I still have difficulty identifying one resin from another. Second, I know that mixing different plastics in single stream recycling in our community’s recycling program doesn’t work. Very simply, most of those plastics will end up in the landfill as “outthrows” from the MRF (Municipal Recycling Facility). Number three, continuing to receive multiple kinds of plastic packaging from e-commerce confounds and confuses all of us.

The report chronicles the effort by the plastics industry to develop a coordinated campaign to “sell the promise of plastic recycling in the 1980s and 1990s.” It references NAPCOR (National Association for PET Container Resources), SPI (Society of Plastic Institute), FPA (Flexible Packaging Association), and many other trade associations as having one objective: “Defend the plastics industry from restrictive legislation by selling recycling as a viable solution to plastic waste.”

One of the first actions of this “campaign of deceit” was the introduction of a code system. Different resins were identified by a number surrounded by a triangle of chasing arrows. I’m sure you’ve seen it. The report decries this as a publicity stunt. And, in fact, with today’s single stream recycling, the codes are, indeed, useless.

Some industry investments did produce specific, limited successes. For example, the recycling rate for PET bottles increased from under 5% to around 30% over the course of the 1980s. But, in general, the “strike force” research mostly reinforced what the plastics industry already knew: plastic recycling was not viable and was unlikely to become so.

Short-term industry investment could not overcome the economic obstacles to plastic recycling. “The basic issue is economics,” the director of environmental solutions at B.F. Goodrich explained to an industry panel in 1992. “For commodity plastics, including PVC, the costs of recycling or recover either overlap or are greater than the selling price for these materials.”

In fact, the report continues that this is the heart of the problem – cost. The cost to recycle, to build the infrastructure, to collect and process, is far greater than producing virgin plastic. The focus has been on adding capacity of resin production rather than finding solutions for plastic waste. From the 60s and 70s until now, 2025, the easy solution has been incineration. The problem with burning, in my view, and I don’t care how modern or sophisticated a particular incinerator is, is emissions. There is just no way we can burn at zero emissions. Incineration, according to the study, is not a viable environmentally satisfactory solution.

If you fast forward to the end of the document, you’ll learn that “microplastics” were publicly identified around 2015, or about 10 years ago.

The situation began to change around 2015. A sudden public awareness of microplastics, combined with increasing visibility of ocean plastics and their impacts on wildlife, led to visceral public backlash. China’s Operation National Sword, a policy implemented in 2018 that stopped the flow of plastic waste from Western countries to China, further compounded the sense that the US faced an impending plastic waste crisis.  

There have been few signs that this wave of public backlash was coming. “To travel back even to 2015,” Stephen Buranyi of The Guardian explained in 2018, “is to enter a world in which almost all of the things we currently know about plastic are already known, but people aren’t very angry about it.”  

Just a few years later, plastics had become a central concern among consumers once again, creating another serious crisis for the plastics industry. The failure of mechanical recycling to address the plastic waste crisis was laid bare, and the industry was left scrambling. As with previous periods of intense public anger, regulatory pressure soon followed. “The public backlash has undoubtedly brought a serious environmental problem to the attention of the highest level of government and business, and convinced them it is a winning issue,” Buranyi reported. “Only a fraction of the proposed measures against plastic have been codified by law…but the feeling is one of enormous potential.”

The petrochemical companies immediately began to tout new investments in recycling in response to the public’s concerns. Dow, for example, announced a commitment of $2.8 million to increase recycling rates at the inaugural “Our Ocean” conference in 2016. But with the myth of plastic recycling crumbling, the companies needed a new strategy. Beginning around 2017, the industry began to use the term “advanced recycling,” promising that it was a significant technological breakthrough that would address hard-to-recycle plastics. The plastics industry has positioned “advanced recycling” as its newest “solution” to the plastic waste crisis, significantly overstating and misrepresenting its potential as a means to justify rapidly expanding plastic production.

Today, we would be generous if we estimated a 10% recycling rate for plastics. We do have success with PET and HDPE (high density polyethylene) recycling schemes. However, we have very limited success with the other resin formulas, including PVC. Indeed, the problem is exasperated by the very fact that we continue to add virgin capacity more and more quickly without implementing
recycling schemes.

New York State has legislated a solution that is being challenged by fossil fuel producing states. New York is requiring fossil fuel companies to pay billions of dollars a year for contributing to climate change. New York is going after what they believe is a major cause of extreme weather. Shades of the US action against the tobacco industry for false advertising, which caused lung cancer. Stay tuned on this one.

My next column will discuss chemical and advanced recycling as the latest answer by the plastics industry to solve the plastics waste crisis.

Another Letter from the Earth

Calvin Frost is chairman of Channeled Resources Group, headquartered in Chicago, the parent company of Maratech International and GMC Coating. His email address is [email protected].