Short Wave - Who's to blame for all this plastic?

Episode Date: April 10, 2026

How did plastic become so ubiquitous? The answer lies deep beneath the surface of the earth. In her new book Plastic Inc., environmental journalist Beth Gardiner lays bare the key connection between plastics and the fossil fuel companies behind them. Today, we dive into the history of the multi-billion dollar industry that brought us plastic, their plans to create even more and what could be done to turn the plastic tide.Interested in more stories about the materials that make up our world? Email us your question at [e-mail] to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave from NPR. Beth Gardner is an environmental journalist, and for years, she carried around a reusable water bottle or brought a canvas bag to the grocery store, you know, daily actions to reduce the plastic in her life. And then one day I read an article, and it just was like a total gut punch because the article said that huge fossil fuel and petrochemical companies like ExxonMobil and their peers in the industry. were ramping up to actually increase plastic production. Plastics come from petrochemicals, which are made by the fossil fuel industry. And reading the news that the industry planned to make even more plastic stopped Beth in her tracks.

To then learn that, you know, this gigantic, wealthy, super politically powerful industry was actually pushing really hard in the other direction and pouring billions of dollars into new manufacturing facilities and that their plans were to make even more plastic in the future, it just, you know, was such a shock. And this revelation, Beth says, planted the seed for her new book, Plastic Inc. Plastic as a revenue stream is helping to float the fossil fuel industry

and keep it going as it starts to be undersold by, clean energy. So any additional source of money is a way to keep drilling. Today on the show, the proliferation of plastic. It's history, its connection to climate change, and what kind of action could truly reverse the plastic tide? I'm Emily Kwong,

and you're listening to Shortwave, the science podcast from NPR. Plastics of peel was obvious from the start. It could be molded into different shapes, given texture, made in different colors. Celluloid, a plastic patented in 1869 was used to make billiard balls, combs, and eventually film for movies. Then along came

newer plastics like plexiglass, nylon, polyethylene, all derived from the byproducts of fossil fuels, each with distinctive characteristics. Now, polyethylene-coded cables, as I learned in Beth Gardner's new book, Plastic Ink, improved radar so much during World War II that it helped turn the naval side of the conflict in favor of the Allies. But as the war-wound death, manufacturers had a decision to make. What would they do with all the plastic now? Here's Beth. After the war, or as the war was winding down, even before it ended, you see the industry kind of gaining this awareness that, number one, they're going to be able to ramp up production as they shift towards a peacetime economy. And number two, who were they going to sell all this plastic to?

And I think what was so shocking to me, as I researched this book, was the deliberateness and in tension with which the industry pushed plastic into our lives. So it really sort of intersects with the world of marketing and advertising. Yeah, you write about how suddenly after the war, there's all this marketing for plastic toys like Silly Puddy and Hulu Hoops. Yep. They're being invented and created with the idea that we will find a good and, by the way, profitable application for them afterwards. I was so taken also with the history of bottle bills. Basically, they're local and state bills that encourage recycling by adding a small deposit, like five cents to the price of soda. And when someone returns an empty bottle of soda, they get that five cents back.

But some beverage companies have historically suppressed these bills to avoid having to pay for these return bottles. Can you tell us about that history? Yeah. One thing that was so interesting, and I was digging into sort of newspaper archives from like the 1970s about a fight in Yonkers, New York, just north of New York City, which was, considering a bill that would require bottle companies to charge a deposit to consumers who bought a bottle. And the industry showed up in force and started talking about bottling plants closing. We're not going to be able to sell soda in yonkers. All the jobs will be lost. 500 jobs are under threat. And the city council kind of panicked. The bill never became law.

and, you know, this has happened in cities and states across the country. There were, you know, a number of times over the decades Congress considered national bottle bill. The industry is always talking up the importance of recycling, but behind the scenes, they've fought very hard against this most effective way of actually making it happen. Yeah. Ten states right now have bottle bills on the books, with legislation actively being considered in several more. should we return to the days of bottle filling stations and food without packaging?

You know, no, it's hard to totally go back, right? Yeah. There are, of course, many essential and even life-saving uses of plastic. You know, I don't want to go into the hospital and not be able to have a sort of sterile and single-use throwaway syringe or IV tubing, right? But that doesn't mean that there's not also a tremendous amount of really wasteful, unnecessary use. Yeah, you talk about a little plastic tray used to catch the drips from your ice cream cone. Exactly. I got one of those on a vacation at the beach about four or five years ago.

I bought this ice cream cone, but there was this little piece of plastic, clear plastic on the bottom that someone had decided was a product worth making and selling and presumably someone was making money off of. And to me, that is the counterpoint to the medical equipment and the essentials that we have now. We could certainly do just fine without those ice cream drip catchers and so much other plastic junk that's in our lives, too. You also talk in the book about fracking. And fracking is when companies drilled deep below the surface of the earth. They blast fluid to unlock gas and oil reserves. And marketing-wise, you know, sold to the public as a way to solve our energy crisis. Instead, it's proven very bad for the environment.

And I didn't realize this at all until reading your book. It has been. created more plastic through the production of ethane. And you go to Washington County, Pennsylvania to visit a family that shares the land with hundreds of fracking wells. What are their lives like? Like you, I had not understood the connection between fracking and plastic production. But in fact, the American fracking boom, which has been going on for about nearly 20 years now, has also driven an American plastic production boom. Because when you are pumping that methane gas, what we call natural gas, out of the ground. You also get by-products, including gas called ethane, which turns out to be really handy for producing polyethylene plastic.

Which is the most common type of plastic. The world's most common plastic. And I followed it back to the source. I went to Washington County, Pennsylvania. It is one of, if not the most heavily fracked counties in Pennsylvania, which is a major fracking state. And if you look at the scientific research, you see that living near fracking wells is linked to all kinds of illnesses, including a lot of evidence showing higher rates of cancers in children who live within a mile or so of a fracking well. And I visited the Bauer-Bjornson family, whose children have all suffered a variety of health problems. And they've watched the landscape around them be changed by fracking. There are fires, sometimes from pipelines and waste ponds. There's

problems with contaminated water. There are pipelines everywhere. There's issues of explosions. And the impacts are so much more widespread than you might imagine when you look at that plastic bottle in your hand, right? Yeah. For a lot of people, the plastics problem can seem distinct from the climate change problem, but you argue that they are inextricably linked. Can you explain why? First of all, plastic is made from oil and gas derivatives. And the very process of turning those derivatives into plastic is a very, very heat and pressure intensive process. It's conducted in these giant petrochemical plants that are massively energy hungry, and their emissions are enormous. But it's also that plastic is subsidizing and making more profitable the continuation

of oil and gas drilling. Yeah. You mentioned that international energy agency is predicting that petrochemicals will be the largest single driver of oil demand growth. Yeah, exactly. So it's helping to prop up this, you know, very catastrophic business model. Towards the end of the book, you provide a plastics success story where a local kid takes action in his city of Honolulu. His name is Dyson Chi to restrict single-use plastics in Honolulu County. And this inspired a similar law in Maui County. And this, you write, is a really encouraging sign for local efforts to make change. Why do you think passing a local law and the copycat effect, how that can inspire other local laws, is more effective than trying to. to pass a state law? Well, the further you go up the food chain of governmental sort of entities, the heavier the lobbyist and corporate presence tends to be, the more pressure there is from that side on the lawmakers. And I think also sort of the further removed, they are from, you know,

direct activism and citizens' concerns. And I think when you talk to people about plastic, You do realize that it is something that so many people who are not even really necessarily super engaged in environmental issues otherwise are really upset about. So I think it's something where it's easier to kind of make your voice heard at the local level, whether it's a city council or a county government or something like that. And we've seen that across the country. I definitely started noticing all the plastic in my life after finishing this book, plastic ink.

And it made me wonder what a world with less plastic would look like. What would that world look like to you? You know, one thing that some of the activists I spoke to said to me is you don't want a world where individual people are carrying around all kinds of containers and, you know, having to remember them when they go to the store or to a restaurant or what have you for a takeout. And there are places where companies like Uber Eats or DoorDash and those sorts of delivery services are partnering with companies that provide reusable.

But it requires some standardization, right? It needs to be pooled among restaurants. I live in London. I had the amazing experience last summer of going to see Beyonce play at a big soccer stadium in London. Oh, lucky you. And I bought a drink. And it came in a reusable cup.

It was plastic, but like a heavy plastic. And the stadium was filled with bins, not the trash bin, but a separate bin where you put your cup in. And it gets reused. I've experienced it at the theater. Oh, it's like 3D glasses at the movies where you use them once and you return them to the bin. Yep. There's ways of doing it, right? But the system has to be built so that it is not all on us as individual consumers. And we are living in a system right now that is built around disposability. It's hard to see past that because it's so entrenched and it's so familiar and it's what we take for granted and we can't see how it can be different. But if the incentives are reset by strong laws that encourage a different way of doing

things, a little bit of a return to the ethos of reuse that, you know, our grandparents or even our parents had just a few decades ago, you know, that kind of legislation and resetting of incentives can actually shift the systems that we operate in and live in. Beth Gardner, author of Plastic Ink. Thank you so much for talking to us. It's been a pleasure. Thanks for having me. If you liked this episode, please share it with a friend. It really helps our show.

And while you're at it, check out the NPR app. It's totally free and personalized to bring you the very best of public radio. Your favorite podcasts, like ours, your local station, and the world's biggest stories all in the palm of your hand. Download the NPR app in your app store today. This episode was produced by Hannah Chin. by Viet Le and Sarah Robbins. It was fact-checked by Tyler Jones. The audio engineer was Robert Rodriguez.

I'm Emily Kwong. Thank you for listening to Shortwave from NPR.