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“The idea that recycling can solve the problem of plastic waste has always been a fraud, and it’s always been a way for the industry to sell more plastic,” Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity.

As I wrote about recently, the use of plastic has increased enormously, creating a huge worldwide problem with plastic trash (“The age of plastics,” December 19, 2024). Much of this plastic is for single-use products like packaging and shopping bags. 

Recycling is supposed to mitigate these problems. But for many reasons, recycling plastic simply does not work. Recycling is not a realistic solution for plastic trash.

Just because there is a recycling symbol on the bottom of the item does not mean the product can be – or is actually going to be – recycled. The vast majority of recycled plastic trash still ends up in landfills (or shipped overseas to create problems in other countries).

As The Center for Climate Integrity points out, recycling is a way to make us think it is okay to continue using plastics because the trash is recycled. In fact recycling plastic is a lie perpetuated by the industry to maintain their growth in sales and profits. 

The plastic industry has spent many millions on advertising for selling recycling to consumers. The Center for Climate Integrity’s 2024 research paper “The Fraud of Plastic Recycling” concludes, “Underpinning the plastic waste crisis is a campaign of fraud and deception that fossil fuel and other petrochemical companies have created and perpetuated for decades.” 

For more than 50 years the plastic manufacturers knew that recycling was not a solution to plastic waste.

In 2020 the PBS program Frontline spent months documenting the problems with recycling plastics (see sources below). They obtained internal industry documents, interviewed experts and former industry officials and talked with operators of recycling businesses. 

They found, “that the industry sold the public on an idea it knew wouldn’t work – that the majority of plastic could be, and would be, recycled – all while making billions of dollars selling the world new plastic.” 

In reality recycling has done very little to actually reduce plastic waste, make new products from old plastic or protect the environment.

In 2020, National Public Radio reported that the plastics industry’s $50 million-a-year ad campaign promoting the benefits of plastic recycling, “...was motivated first and foremost by legislation...being introduced in state legislatures...and in Congress to ban or curb the use of plastics.” 

To be fair, the plastic industry has, according to NPR, attempted a number of “feel-good projects” to try and make recycling work better. They have funded the development of sorting machines, community recycling centers and nonprofits to promote recycling. They tried to create new products from recycled plastic and new markets for recycled plastic. 

But few of these projects actually worked out or significantly reduced the volume of plastic trash. Plastic recycling is simply not economically feasible. Making stuff from new plastic is cheaper and easier than making it out of plastic trash.

Plastic recycling is technically possible but has too many problems that prevent recycling at the scale needed to absorb the huge amount of plastic trash. There are hundreds of different kinds of plastic that are chemically different and cannot be lumped together for reprocessing. Neither can they be easily or economically separated for reprocessing. 

Another problem is that plastics degrade when reused and often can not be reprocessed more than once or twice. In contrast, other materials like aluminum, steel, paper and glass can be repeatedly reprocessed and economically recycled.

There have been benefits from plastics. But there have also been negative consequences. Unfortunately we never assess the consequences before the problems become a crisis. 

Have the benefits been worth planet-altering consequences? 

When one thinks about all the unnecessary, convenience or profit-motivated uses of plastic it is hard to rationally justify the environmental costs. Single-use plastic bags, excessive packaging, drink bottles or throw-away plastic forks and plates certainly are not essential or worth the cost.

We have seen the results of putting profit before people or the planet in the past. There are numerous examples of inadequately tested new products, chemicals or technologies having unintended consequences. Sometimes the downsides were not known until later. 

Too often the downsides were fully known but profit was more important than public health or safety.
So what is the answer? The Center for Climate Integrity says petrochemical companies should be held liable for their deceptive advertising and the resulting harm to communities. 

The tobacco industry is an example of requiring responsibility for the products you make. Requiring producers to be responsible for taking back old appliances, electronics and car batteries is being done in many places. It should be a requirement that every manufacturer have an end-of-life strategy and take responsibility for what they have made.

The Eco Cycle website says companies should be required to 1) reduce plastic use by not making unnecessary things (like excessive packaging), 2) stop making more toxic and  difficult to recycle types of plastic (number 3, 6 and 7), 3) redesign products to make them more recyclable by standardizing their chemical composition and, 4) buy back the plastic containers they have produced. 

This would create a “market” for their type of plastic and allow more effective reuse.
A better solution is to go back to reusable rather than throw-away containers. Many food and beverage containers could have standardized sizes and shapes and be washed out and reused. This used to be common practice. 

Plastic is cheap in part because the manufacturers do not pay for their trash. If they had to pay the full cost of their product, reusing glass containers might be competitive. If non-monetary factors were considered – like the health of the planet – reusable containers would be the best choice.
But in our our greed-based capitalist political and economic system everything is measured and valued by how much profit it produces. Plastic production is very profitable and a $400 billion a year industry.

Sources:

“The Fraud of Plastic Recycling,” The Center for Climate Integrity, climateintegrity.org/plastics-fraud 

“Plastic Wars,” Frontline PBS video on YouTube youtube.com/watch?v=-dk3NOEgX7o 

“The Truth About Plastics Recycling,” Eco Cycle website ecocycle.org/eco-living/recycling-101/recycling-plastics

“Plastic Recycling is a Lie,” Earth Day 2025 website earthday.org/plastic-recycling-is-a-lie.