Tech Won't Save Us - Plastic Recycling Is a Scam w/ Dharna Noor

Episode Date: March 7, 2024

Paris Marx is joined by Dharna Noor to discuss widely-held misconceptions about the effectiveness of plastic recycling and how industry lobbies invented them to protect the market for plastic products.Dharna Noor is the fossil fuels and climate reporter at The Guardian.Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Support the show on Patreon.The podcast is made in partnership with The Nation. Production is by Eric Wickham. Transcripts are by Brigitte Pawliw-Fry.Also mentioned in this episode:On Friday, March 8, Paris will be speaking with Ed Ongweso Jr. and Brian Merchant about Dune: Part Two and its connection to the growing Luddite movement. Watch it on our YouTube channel at 11am PT / 2pm ET / 7pm GMT.Our conversation was based in part on the Center for Climate Integrity’s new report called “The Fraud of Plastic Recycling.”Dharna reported on that report and has previously written about plastic materials ending up in landfills, fashion’s use of plastic, and the problem with replacing plastics with other disposables.In 2018, Barack Obama said, “That whole ‘suddenly America’s like the biggest oil producer and the biggest gas,’ that was me, people.New research has found microplastics in the placentas of unborn babies. The science isn’t settled on the effects on microplastics on human health, but there’s reason to be concerned.Support the show

There's a really, I think, important parallel between the way that the plastic industry covered up its own information about the kind of lack of viability around plastics recycling and the way that oil and gas companies, which in many cases were actually the producers of plastic, covered up their knowledge that using and burning fossil fuels is contributing to the climate crisis in a way that can be really, really dangerous and in fact is really, really dangerous, and in fact, is really, really dangerous. Hello, and welcome to Tech Won't Save Us, made in partnership with The Nation magazine. I'm your host, Paris Marks, and this week my guest is Darna Noor.

Darna is the fossil fuels and climate reporter at The Guardian, and recently had an article about the problems with plastic recycling based on a new report that was out showing that basically this thing is not very effective. It was dreamed up by oil companies and plastic industry lobby groups in order to make us believe that we could keep consuming all of this plastic in perpetuity and it wouldn't have these serious environmental impacts that we're very clearly seeing it have today. And so I thought this would be an interesting conversation for the podcast because, you know, while it's not about digital technology, the show covers aspects of technology that go far beyond that. And when we talk about recycling, when we talk about plastics, when we talk about the notion of using technology in order

to break down these plastics or to figure out other ways to address this problem, this is something that I think is very much within the remit of the show to discuss, especially as we're seeing industry, whether it's the tech industry or other sectors, constantly push tech solutions to the climate crisis and to the environmental problems that we're having, which seek to tell us that we don't need to really upend the structures of how our society works, but rather we can address these problems just by introducing some new technologies and allowing everything else to continue as they are going. And obviously when it comes to fossil fuel use and plastic use, that is simply not the case.

Just because we're sold this idea that we can recycle and then keep using all of these disposable and single-use plastics, that is not actually the truth. And we have decades to show that this recycling solution is not actually working because it was only developed in the first place by these industries to get us to keep consuming these plastics in perpetuity and not thinking about actually upending the way that these consumption patterns and the way that these structures in our society work so that we don't need to be reliant on all this single-use plastic in the first place and develop much more sustainable, much more reusable means of accessing the goods that we need in our lives. But that, of course, wouldn't work for the fossil fuel industry or for the plastics industry. So we have been distracted from that for decades with instead the narrative of plastic recycling, even though a very small percentage of plastic is actually recycled. And much of that plastic can only be reused at most one or two times if it even enters that pipeline at all before it's not useful to continue recycling it after that anyway. So that's kind of a long way of saying that I

really enjoyed this conversation with Darna. I think it's an essential thing that we need to understand. And it's not to say that all recycling is bad and we shouldn't be recycling or anything like that. I still recycle because I think that's important, but I'm not trying to fool myself into thinking that that is actually addressing the core of the problem, which needs to be addressed and dealt with on a much higher level than my personal individual actions and any of our personal individual actions. So yeah, it's a great conversation. And before we get into it, I just want to let you know about something that is actually happening tomorrow. If you're listening to this on the day it comes out.

So on March 8th at 11am Pacific time, 2pm Eastern p.m. in the UK. I am doing a live stream with Ed Ongwezo Jr. and Brian Merchant, two people who you will be very familiar with from the podcast. And it's called Time for a Butlerian Jihad, question mark, obviously. And basically, it's a live stream to discuss the Dune films. Of course, the new one just came out last week, as you are listening to this. And of course, the growing resurgence of Luddism, the Luddites, this kind of criticism of technology that this podcast is very much a part of. And the reason I wanted to have that conversation with them was one, because I wanted to talk about the new film because I love the Dune films. And I'm just a big fan of Denis Villeneuve in general. But also within the Dune

universe, there is this event that happens well before the films called the Butlerian Jihad, where they basically have a revolt against what they call the thinking machines or the intelligent machines, because they are basically taking over. There's a quote in the first Dune book that goes, quote, once men turn their thinking over to machines in the first Dune book that goes, quote, once men turn their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free, but that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them. And so I think that is very relevant at the moment, you know, as we think about the effects of our own kind of digital revolution and what's going on with technology now. So yeah, if you want to join us for that live stream, it will be public. I'll include the YouTube link down in the show notes. You know, if you miss it, you can go watch it

later. You don't need to watch it live. So that's March 8th at 11 a.m. Pacific, 2 p.m. Eastern, 7 p.m. in the UK. And I hope you can join us. And with that said, if you like this conversation, make sure to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can also share the show on social media or with any friends or colleagues who you think would learn from it. And if you want to support the work that goes into making the show every week and get a series of premium interviews based on our Elon Musk on Mask series that aired last October, you can join supporters like Forrest from Charlottesville, Ashley in Bertrand, Michigan, Pepe in London, and Grant Ennis by going to patreon.com slash techwon'tsaveus where you can become a supporter as well. Thanks so much and enjoy this week's conversation. Darna, welcome to Tech Won't Save

Us. Thanks for having me on the best podcast. Thank you so much. Great to have you. You know, I have been following your work for, you know, a number of years now, as you've been reporting on climate change and so many other topics around this. And you recently wrote a story about a new report from the Center for Climate Integrity that went into, you know, this massive problem of plastics that we have, the issues with recycling them, and the complicity of the fossil fuel industry in pushing these narratives around recycling for a very long time. And so I thought that this would be a great time to have you on the show, because while it's not about digital technology, there's still a very clear kind of technological piece to this that I think is worth digging into, especially as this

problem just gets worse and worse with every passing year. And so before we dig into kind of the substance of that report, I wanted to take us back a little bit, right? Because we weren't always so surrounded with all of this plastic. So where did this idea that we need to have all of this disposable plastic, that everything needs to be packaged in plastic, where did this come from? And when did industry really start churning out

all of these plastic products? Yeah, it's funny. When plastic first became really popular in the US, it was actually known for being durable. And so consumers would buy like a plastic laundry bag, for instance, and use it over and over and over again. And that was really like a marketability kind of claim, you know, it was like a this idea that you could rely on plastic to be around for a long time that it wouldn't tear necessarily and things like this. And then in the 50s, two things happened. One is that basically, you know, plastic producers kind of got together and came up with this idea of disposability to ensure that they had a continual market for their products, right? No one is going to keep buying something that's supposed to last forever. So there became this idea that like, in order to keep selling products, the plastic products could end up being made more cheaply, thinner plastics could be used and things like that. And so that was a really big shift in the market and the market sort of, or the producers

sort of responded to it immediately. The other thing that happened around this time is that tragically, a bunch of kids, like dozens of kids around the US actually started choking and suffocating on plastic bags. And that was obviously like a huge issue for plastic producers, right? Nobody wants to be implicated in like the horrific, in some cases, deaths of children. And the plastic industry, actually, this is something that the report that you mentioned gets into too, but the plastic industry really kind of did like crisis PR around this and basically blamed mothers. They said like, oh, well, you know, really these are meant to be thrown away. And so if you want to protect your kids, really, you need to make sure that you throw

plastic bags away as soon as you use them, which is a theme that we continue to see today, right? This idea that like any problem with plastics, any way that plastics are fucking up your life are just due to the consumer. And we should be the ones who are tasked with solving the problem, even if it's like literally about the horrific deaths of children. That is absolutely wild. I did not realize that piece of it. And of course, like these plastics become everywhere, you know, become much more common. And of course, there are going to be repercussions to that that are unexpected. Of course, the waste one is one that we're still dealing with now, which is not so unexpected. But I'm sure back then when it was just getting started, they were like, ah,

these will go to the landfills and then we won't think about it anymore because of course, anything that goes to the landfill just disappears, right? And we never have to think about it again. But yeah, of course, the effect on kids, the effect on families, like the broader changes that came with that. And this notion that plastic is durable, which is still something that is around today, right? It's still this notion that we have like plastics going to last, it's not going to break down like these other products that you have, but then also reframing it as disposable wear, okay, it lasts, but also you can throw it out, you know, after a single use. Yeah, exactly. Now the durability seems to be a sort of problem, like a marketing problem for the industry where nobody really likes that plastic sticks around doesn't break down in

landfills, you know, that basically every plastic bottle you've ever used, every plastic toothbrush you've ever used is still out there somewhere unless it's been incinerated, which has its own environmental problems. So where that used to be like a big talking point, now it's something that they're really trying to move away from. Wow. Yeah, that's wild. It's fascinating too, because I imagine this is just another one of these shifts that like coming out of the second world war, there's all this kind of like productive capacity and stuff that, you know, was going on then and being produced then that all these producers were like, we can't wind down everything that we've been doing, we need to figure out kind of a new use and a new way to kind of redeploy

this technology into a consumer use so that, you know, we can keep making profits and stuff or whatever that we were achieving through the war, I'd imagine there's some connection there too. Totally. And there was a need for around that time and in decades previously, there was a need for cheap products that were really accessible. There was a sort of desire for a democratized market in some sense and having cheap products that you could buy over and over again. But that sort of, in some ways, gave the feeling that the engine of the market was always running, that people were always going out and they were, and everyone was able to buy things over and over and over again, I think was a really big selling point for the industry and something that they tried to push

onto consumers too. Yeah, absolutely. And I imagine this is also associated with this, you know, especially in the United States, this push towards suburbanization, right? Everyone is kind of moving into there, or at least all the white people are moving into their, you know, single family homes. You're going to fill it with all these goods. There's a big push even around like plastic furniture and stuff, you know, as you kind of move into the decades after that. And of course, once you are so spread out like that, you're not close to things in the way that you would have when you were in a city. And so if you need to travel to pick things up, if you need to go buy groceries or something like that, you're buying more at one time. So they need to be

packaged in a way that is going to last longer or whatnot in a way that wasn't as expected before, because you might be picking up food every day or two from like, you know, a local bakery and a local grocer or whatever. But of course, as suburbanization happens and you have these kind of large big box stores and malls and things spring up, that also changes consumption patterns there, working more plastic into that consumption that people ultimately do, right? Yeah. It's interesting though, because within a few decades, there was this really big consumer backlash to this idea because Americans were not into the idea that plastics could just be incinerated or landfilled. And so that's where the sort of early push from the industry that

recycling is the answer sort of came from. But you know, it's interesting that like, this was marketed as something that was so good for consumers, but consumers really were kind of like, we just don't buy it. We don't really want more things in our landfills. We're concerned about more incinerators being in our neighborhoods and things like this. So it didn't really have the PR effect that the industry wanted, it seems, at least not for very long. That's a great point. And I'd like you to kind of dig down on that further, right?

Because in the piece, and I'm sure coming from the report that you mentioned, there's discussion about how, especially by the 1980s, there's this real shift in kind of the public mood and even the mood of governments around plastics. You have municipal governments seeking to, you know, kind of ban plastics and whatnot. And of course, the industry feels a threat to this large market that they've created, and they feel a need to respond. So what is happening around that period? What drives this backlash, as you're saying? And then how does the industry look at ways to make sure that their product is not kind of regulated out of existence? Yeah, I mean, so a few things happen around like the late 70s, early 80s, I guess it was.

People start getting really concerned about littering. More plastic stuff in your house, more plastic, especially like food packaging, which became popular in the 50s and 60s, I believe, meant that, you know, more people were dropping their plastic around cities, around their neighborhoods and things like that. And also that sort of coincided with this broader interest in like environmentalism or conservationism or whatever coming out of the free love movement and all these things. But then like this sort of suburbanized, like populist American version of that took off in the 80s. And municipalities started considering banning lots of plastic products, primarily grocery bags. That was a big thing that, you know, a handful of municipalities were sort of considering. And the industry really quickly sort of clapped back at that. They, you know, started launching these pilot programs in different areas that were considering regulations on plastics. There was one ban on polystyrene, so on styrofoam, that was being considered in

Minnesota. And in the 80s, this industry group called the Council for Solid Waste went there and set up this so-called pilot project where they were like, oh, we're going to fund plastic recycling center here. We're going to see how it goes. We're, of course, not going to stick around to ensure that this is actually a viable solution to taking care of plastic waste, but we're definitely going to promote our funding of this project. And we're definitely going to, you know, come here and lobby against plastic regulation and show what a great job we're doing at taking on the problem by ourselves and things like this. That was in many cases, actually pretty effective. They really ran their advertising around plastic recycling at this time too. There was this group in this women's sort of interest magazine, ladies home journal that said a bottle can come back as a bottle

over and over and over again. But we obviously know that's not true because every time plastic gets recycled, it actually gets degraded. You can only really recycle plastic like one time or twice and you can't make a bottle into a bottle over and over and over again. It's just not true. That's something that they've known also for quite a while, which we can get into. Definitely. And there's a quote from a report in your piece, a 1986 report from the Vinyl Institute, which is a trade association, where they say that, quote, recycling cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution to plastics as it merely prolongs the time until an item is disposed of. So these companies in this industry is pushing out this idea of recycling as the solution to this problem,

even as internally they're admitting that this is not actually the solution. This is not addressing this problem that increasing numbers of people and governments are concerned about. And in that moment is also when even this logo of the arrows representing recycling rolls out. And, you know, we'd imagine that this is like today, like as we're thinking about recycling, that this is something that like is developed by government that is part of this environmental program. But as you explain, this is very much a corporate practice, like part of their kind of marketing campaign for this. Can you talk a bit more about that? Yeah, it's something that actually there's been quite a lot of crackdown on recently. Federal regulators actually right now are looking to, at the very least, regulate how the sort of chasing arrow symbol has been used. And again, that's that like triangle logo that has three arrows. And that's supposed to sort of indicate that a material can be recycled. The thing is that it doesn't actually mean that a material can be recycled at all. And it definitely

doesn't mean that a material is being recycled. Like on the one hand, this is because there's not been sort of public policy to really make sure that plastic is getting recycled. Just a couple years ago, there was a report that showed that only 5% of plastic used in the US was actually recycled. But it's not just a policy problem. It also actually is very technically difficult to sort and recycle plastic. There's like 1000s of different kinds of plastic and most of them can't be recycled together. So they have to be sorted. And that's really expensive, obviously, because somebody needs to do that. Also, again, the material actually degrades every time it's used.

So it can generally only be reused once or twice. There are these actual kind of material problems with plastic recycling, and that's something the industry has known about for a really long time. And so, you know, the chasing arrows symbol really takes off as a way to sort of skirt all of that and say, oh, well, don't worry about the cost. Don't worry about the technical difficulties. Just look at this arrow that shows that everything's going to be fine. But I think really right now, public awareness is increasing that everything's not fine and plastic is not being recycled the way that we're told it is. I feel like even when obviously a lot of people still do recycle plastic and there are these symbols for plastic recycling on a number of these products. And like there's different numbers associated with the different types of plastic. And I feel like even then, like there are instructions from cities oftentimes that say, you know, numbers this, this and this are recyclable.

But actually the ones that have this number are not actually recyclable and don't give them to us because we can't do anything with them. So even then, there's this kind of flaw in the idea of this notion. But then when you even go behind the scenes, you see that even those products that do have the numbers that are recyclable are still not very recyclable, right? It's totally true. The other thing is like the industry has done nothing to ensure that they're making products that are recyclable, not only like prioritizing the use of the materials that we know how to recycle and have the actual infrastructure to do so. But also, I'll give you just one example. There's like a really popular

brand of juice right now, the bottle itself is made of one kind of plastic. The logo and the wrapping around it are made out of another kind of plastic. If you throw that in the recycling container, no one is going to sit there and remove meticulously that sticker from the plastic bottle. They're just going to throw it out because you can't recycle those two kinds of plastics together. And that's really, really pervasive. Like, you know, a little plastic sticker, a little plastic and foil wrapping, you know, the way that plastics are mixed with other materials in day-to-day household items just makes it really, really difficult to do anything with them besides toss them into a landfill

or into an incinerator. And then I imagine the lid on the bottle is probably another type of plastic as well that would require, you know, a whole different process to recycle too. And one of the things that you mentioned in, I don't know if it was this piece or another piece that I wrote, was that even when some of these plastics can be recycled, and as you mentioned, a very small number

even make it into the recycling kind of system in the first place, that even if that happens, that they can only be recycled a few times because they very quickly degrade to a point where they're not really usable again and again, happens that they can only be recycled a few times because they very quickly degrade to a point where they're not really usable again and again, unlike what was said in that women's magazine that you quoted where the bottle just keeps coming back and back and back, right?

Yeah, exactly. That's why sometimes you'll see things like building insulation or things like this that are made of old plastic bottles. that is a use that you can actually get out of a plastic bottle after it's been recycled once or twice. But like another material that you can actually hold and shape in your hands that like can either be a vessel for something or like can be made into a plastic toy that you get in Happy Meal or something like that. You're not going to be able to recycle a plastic bottle into anything like that more than once at the very most. As you describe all of that, one thing that really stands out to me is just how effective this campaign has really been. Like if we think about how in the 1970s and 1980s, people were really angry about plastics, were looking at plastic bag bans and things like that and wanting some action on this. It seems like this campaign to push recycling as the alternative instead of these actions to reduce the use of plastic have been actually very effective because I think back to like how a lot of plastic bag bands that we've seen have only really come into force in the past decade. So that's pushing it out several decades from when many of them were first proposed. And before

there's a greater consciousness around these things and governments finally start to wake up to it again. But it feels like in general, the issue of plastic waste and the problems with plastic recycling, while they are recognized, are still not necessarily a widespread thing. Like when there are actions from governments to reduce the plastics that are available, these disposable plastics, there's often a sizable backlash to this, which I'm assuming in some cases is funded by these same lobbies. But in other cases, are people just annoyed with the fact that this convenience is being taken away, I guess? Yeah, I mean, I think both of those things are true. Climate related and environmental issues have always been sort of ripe for culture war fights in the US.

And I think especially in the past two decades or so, there's definitely been a sort of contingent of, I don't know, like so-called American traditionalists or whatever, sort of right wing people who are pushing this idea that actually it's really, really great that we are drinking out of bottles that you can buy for an increasing amount of money, but still for pretty cheap, even though those are doing things like exposing you and your children to PFAS, which can cause hormone disruption and, you know, polluting our oceans and the production of them is contributing to the climate crisis and things like that. So yeah, certainly I think that people have gotten used to a level of convenience. And then also some people are sort of attached to the idea of plastics as like a sort of American right

or something. But the other thing is like, we're just producing a lot more of this stuff generally. And a big reason for this sort of industry push around recycling is that the U.S. has, a few decades ago, the U.S. started hugely ramping up fracking. Plastic is made from sort of byproduct of oil and gas. More fracked gas in the U.S. has created a sort of glut. And there's a pretty convincing argument, I think, that like the industry has ramped up plastic production. And in fact, it's said this in some cases as a sort of plan B for what to do with oil and gas. So there's a lot more interest in clamping down on the use of fossil fuels for energy. But you know, the industry wants to ensure that it has a market for oil and gas.

And so it's sort of pushing this idea that we need to be producing more oil and gas so that we can have plastic in our lives. And that means that we're getting more, frankly, propaganda for the use of plastics. And it also means that we're seeing more concern around things like ocean plastics, around things like microplastics, getting into our food supply and into our clothes and things like this. You know, there's more public concern about this because there's more plastic around. But I think we'll also, as the years go on, see that the industry has been working to assuage those fears in its ways to, you know, obviously, I think it's safe to bet in ways that don't actually tackle the problem, but nonetheless, trying to assuage those fears. Yeah. And I want to come back to some of those things in just a little bit to dig into those further and, you know, probably some of those false

solutions that are kind of coming up around the modern issues and concerns that we're seeing there. As you describe the kind of fracking boom and how that has contributed to this, it just brings to mind that image of Barack Obama saying it was me or whatever when he was talking about the massive increase of oil and gas production under his presidency. Meanwhile, he was also trying to position himself as kind of a climate leader and whatnot, right? How much of the oil and gas that is extracted is produced today actually goes into plastic production and kind of, you know, on that climate side of things, we're thinking about emissions. And when we're thinking about oil and gas production, how much of that is related to plastics and not just like the amount of stuff we burn in our cars and whatnot. So in figures from like 2012,

plastic production accounted for like 4% of all global oil production, which is, you know, that might not seem that significant. But if you think about like, you know, 4% of the entire global production of oil, that's pretty huge. And that number is almost certainly much higher now when it's on the rise. There's figures that actually show that like by 2050, half of all oil demand is actually going to be driven by plastic production. And that's due to plastics getting into a bunch of different sectors. So, you know, we're not only talking about things like food packaging and bottles and things like that. We're also talking about plastics being used to make clothes and in forms like polyester and things like this. Plastic has become pervasive in like every single economic sector. And that is not a coincidence. That's definitely a choice that the industry has made to make itself seemingly necessary for like all sectors of the economy to function and thrive. Definitely. And I would imagine that this campaign that plastics companies engaged in through the 1980s and beyond in order to get us

to buy into these things were also related to that broader push by the fossil fuel industry to get us to not want to move away from their products after climate change started to become a big issue in that same moment, right? Yeah, 100%. There's a really, I think, important parallel between the way that the plastic industry covered up its own information about the kind of lack of viability around plastics recycling and the way that oil and gas companies, which in many cases were actually the producers of plastic, covered up their knowledge that using and burning fossil fuels is contributing to the climate crisis

in a way that can be really, really dangerous, and in fact, is really dangerous. So you know, lots of parallels there. And certainly those two things are very related. If the industry had its way, we would think that, first of all, we wouldn't ever think about the fact that it's oil and gas that are being used to make plastic. We would also think that it's not a big deal that if we did find that out, oh, well, it's not a big deal because oil and gas are not really a problem for kind of ecological systems. And further, you know, the plastic isn't a problem either because we can just recycle it and use it forever and ever and ever. And it's great to have more plastic in the world because it's just a closed loop. Everything is very kumbaya. We have a closed loop and it's a circular economy and we're all fine.

One of the quotes from your story that really stood out to me is from 1994, an Exxon employee telling staffers at the American Plastics Council, quote, we are committed to the activities of plastics recycling, but not committed to the results. So we're going to use this thing, but you know, it might not work and that's fine because it, you know, is doing what we need it to do anyway. If we're thinking about the companies that are, that are massively involved in kind of creating this plastics and, you know, part of this effort to get us to use more plastics, I guess for me, one of the big ones that comes to mind is Coca-Cola of course, and all of their, you know, disposable plastic bottles that we're drinking things out of their, you know, disposable plastic bottles that

we're drinking things out of. But like, are there other ones that really stand out that people might not think of so much? Oh, man, so many. The thing about plastic being in everything is that it's like actually really hard to place blame on any single company. I mean, obviously, like the trade associations and the petrochemical companies themselves bear a lot of responsibility for this. But also like, you know, there's Danone, the like big French multinational food corporation that owns like a bajillion different brands like, you know, Activia yogurt or whatever, and like silk hair products and things like this. Also, by the way, owns lots of brands that market

themselves as very natural and sustainable and things like this. They are accountable for a huge percentage of plastics. And that's based on reports that not only look at the production side, but also take a look at the waste side. So who made all of these plastic water bottles or yogurt containers or whatever that we're finding in the ocean? Often the answer is to known. And then, I mean, there's like a million, again, a million other companies that are, um, kind of tied up in the interests of plastics and petrochemicals. I'm using that word pestrochemicals because plastic is itself a by-product of petrochemicals, petrochemicals from petroleum. Um, but like, you know, if you think about, uh, I don't know, in just one example,

like fast fashion producers, the very business model of like an H&M or I don't know, a Timu, I guess, is hugely dependent on this continued supply of plastic based materials. So like acrylic, again, polyester, these are all things that are made of oil, they're all things that are made of plastic. And you know, they're responsible for sort of glut of cheap clothes, and the trend cycle is sort of speeding up and things like this. But they're also responsible for all of those clothes being like really, really shitty quality. How often do you buy a pair of jeans that has like some amount of stretch in it and find that it rips within like, I don't know, two or three months of wearing, you know, versus like an older

pair of 100% cotton jeans that just like last and last and last. So yet another issue with this material being in everything. But you know, it also again, kind of means that the blame is distributed, maybe not evenly, but it is widely distributed. So it's hard to point a finger and say like you one company are the problem, which I think makes accountability even harder. No, that makes total sense. And I'm happy you brought up the issue of clothes too, right? Because it shows that this is something that is just so broad and has worked its way into

so many different industries. It's not just, you know, when we go to the grocery store and see all the packaging there or whatever, but it's basically everywhere, everything, you know, the process of making these things has been remade to work plastics into it because this is, or can be such a cheap material in order to create, especially if you're comparing it to kind of natural fibers and things like that in that case. And I guess, you know, if people are looking at the world around us today, they might be seeing governments, you know, passing plastic bag bans or removing plastic straws and maybe get an idea that the amount of plastics that we're using as a society is starting to go down. But is that actually true?

Or are we still seeing this massive expansion? We're not using less plastic. There was a small dip, like there was a sort of a small dip in everything during the sort of height of the COVID-19 pandemic. But we really quickly recovered from that. And we're making a record amount of single use plastic right now. That is certainly set to rise too. There's projections again, that like, we're going to be producing more and more and more plastic, we're going to be producing more and more oil and gas that go into plastic production. And, you know, the sort of tinkering around the edges, like the bands on straws and bags and things like that can be a good start. But, you know, they are more than made up for by the increasing use of plastic and in other

sectors. Definitely. And I guess related to that, can you talk about what these campaigns actually did, right? And taking this problem that is really collective and making it seem like it is something that is not about these massive companies that are making all this plastic, but you, the individual, and whether you are taking your little plastic things that you buy from the store or whatever, and putting them in the right bin. Like, how does that change the framing on the issue in a way that serves the industry? This sort of framing that it's your fault, that it's the consumer's fault is really, really typical for the oil industry, for the petrochemical industry, for the plastics industry. Again, these are all sort of tied up in the same interests because plastic is made from oil.

And so there's been lots and lots of research that looks at advertising and marketing from oil companies that show that there's been a really concerted effort to frame climate change as your fault. You guys have discussed on this show before the early use of the term carbon footprint, which was popularized by BP, the oil company, the carbon footprint, as in the like sort of idea that you have a footprint based on the things that you consume and based on the things that you buy. And it's your fault, not the fault of the companies that you purchase those things from. And similarly, we've seen a sort of push from plastic companies to frame plastic pollution, to frame the climate impact of plastics as consumers' fault. So, you

know, if there's littering, then the campaign says not to be a litter bug and to make sure that you take care of your trash. Obviously, no responsibility on the companies that are putting more single-use plastics into your neighborhood. When there's a concern around plastic not being recycled, then there's a framing that, oh, people just aren't sorting them properly in their homes. People just aren't taking the time to put plastics into the right bins, things like this. When there's plastic fabrics that are falling apart all the time, oh, well, you just need to learn to take better care of them and things like this. And that's not to say that people should not take care of their own lives and things like that. But I think what

we've really seen is like the concerted effort to frame everything as an individual problem has really, really worked to kind of inhibit collective action and regulation, especially. Definitely. And you can see how it's not an individual problem in the sense that like, you know, again, I always go back to the the grocery store but like if you go to like buy some groceries or whatever or if you just go to a walmart or go to buy almost anything you see that everything is basically packaged in plastic to some degree you often don't have a choice of some alternative packaging like if you're going to go buy a bottle of juice or like a jug of juice or like that, usually these days there's not even a glass bottle option to buy anymore. You have to buy the plastic. Everything has switched over to being packaged in these materials. to solve this problem is just so divorced from the reality because you often don't even have the ability to make the choice in order to not use the plastic, right? Because it's all that

you have left after plastics have just consumed everything and the way that everything is packaged has been remade around this plastics industry. Yeah, totally. It's funny to think about the framing of consumer choice in this sort of area, right? Because you can go to the grocery store and see a million different options for what kind of seltzer in a plastic bottle you can buy. But often you don't really have the option of buying something that's not in plastic. Actually, there has been, with all the sort of trendy probiotic drinks and everything, I think there has been, you know, with all the like sort of trendy probiotic drinks and everything, I think there has been a push to use more glass, more aluminum, which those have their own problems

because they're, you know, heavier to ship. And that means that there's more carbon emissions with shipping them and things like this, but they don't have some of the same sort of recyclability problems as plastics. You genuinely can recycle glass. But again, there's this really big problem of mixed use materials. If you buy a tin can and it's got a plastic wrapping around it, it's going to be pretty difficult to recycle that tin can with the rest of the tin. The same thing goes for a plastic water bottle. So I think there's a pretty strong argument to be made that this largely comes from desires for profit and desires to seem sustainable desires to have the vibe of like, being one of the good guys. And you know, you can

be so virtuous if you buy my probiotic soda instead of this other person's probiotic soda. But in fact, it's not really solving the problem. Yeah, every time you bring up the notion of like the small wrapper on these bottles is it's like blowing my mind because that's not something that I thought about before, but it makes total sense. And like, you know, I'm sure most people wouldn't think of it, but based on what you were saying there, I kind of have two questions based on that. And I think the first is this question of recycling more generally, right? We've talked about how plastics recycling is very inefficient. It's something that was kind of dreamed up by the plastics and fossil fuel lobbies in order to distract the public and lawmakers and things like that from actions that

would have actually reduced the use of plastics to allow their industries to continue growing and kind of the pervasiveness of plastics to continue. But what is your assessment of recycling more generally and the good parts of it, the bad parts of it, the role that it plays in, I guess, environmentalism and how concerned we should be about recycling as an issue? I mean, I don't think that recycling can ever be the answer because we're just producing too much stuff. And I don't mean this in like an austerity, like we should just have fewer things way. It's just I don't actually think that it makes your life that much better to buy more things that fall apart more easily. That doesn't mean that there's not a place for recycling. And I think that we do need to make sure that we ramp up

recycling efforts for aluminum, for glass. But it's just not a solution that's very well suited for plastic waste at all. And like, like, if I'm up against the wall, does that mean that I don't think that there should be more efforts to like, make sure that we have plastic sorting facilities and like recycling facilities that actually work in more places? I don't know. I mean, I guess that it's worth doing that, because I don't think that we really have another option at the moment. Like, I don't think there's going to be some huge push to clamp down on plastic production, but there absolutely should be. And that doesn't mean that we need to have like less stuff. It doesn't mean we have to like inconvenience ourselves so

hugely because I don't think that this stuff is really making our lives any better in the first place. Yeah. And I feel like you see more and more people who are frustrated with the kind of lack of quality in a lot of the products that we have today. And in part, that comes out of the need for disposability and for the companies to be able to keep selling you something new within certain periods of time that work for their business models. And so they're disincentivized to create that quality. And so it falls apart more quickly and it has to be disposed of more quickly and replaced and

what have you. I feel quite similarly on recycling as you do, right? Like I still recycle, even though I recognize that it's not like the big solution that's going to change everything, but I still feel like it's an important thing to do because if we're thinking about an ideal way that things work in society, I think we would want to know that even the things that we do consume are able to go back and be kind of recreated or recycled into something else. But of course, the key to that as well is even if you think of the three R's, which I'm sure are like another piece of the plastic lobby thing. It's like reduce and reuse comes before recycling, but those sorts of things tend to get left out there. I don't know. I think

recycling is important, but I also don't think that we should allow ourselves to be deceived into thinking that it's like the silver bullet solution or really making a big difference, especially when it comes to plastics, but is much more important when it comes to glass and aluminum and metals and things like that, that can be much more easily reused and turned back into something else that is usable. Yeah, exactly. And there have been some efforts to sort of improve recycling by starting at the source. So, you know, for instance, like there's been some talk of regulators making sure that plastic producers only use the kind of plastics that we have the resources to actually recycle or not to mix materials so that that makes it easier to recycle. I mean, I guess those are good efforts.

I still think that this is something that's fundamental to the material itself. But again, I don't think that means that we need to get rid of recycling, especially, as you said, when it comes to other materials that are actually way better suited for this process. And on that point as well, when we talk about this need for disposability and the problems of plastic recycling and whatnot, you know, there is a growing recognition that that's a problem, right? That we use too much plastic, that the waste is everywhere, that we can't keep using it the way that we have in the past. And part of the proposed solutions to that, I guess, from industry has been, on the one hand, these kind of bioplastics, these plastics that they say are more green, more environmentally friendly, made with plant-based materials and whatnot. And then, of course, what we've been seeing more recently as well, where there are more

kind of paper-based products that are replacing lids on cups or straws or what have you that are kind of working its way into fast food restaurants and these places where these disposable products are usually used. What do you make of these alternatives? Is this a real solution or is this still distracting us from the deeper problem of disposability? I mean, some of these things are better. I don't think that they solve the problem. The bioplastics that you're talking about, like the ones that are made from things like vegetable oils or starch, they can be less polluting, like less polluting in terms of greenhouse gas emissions and in terms of kind of toxic pollution than traditional plastic to make. And some of them are compostable, which is great if you actually

compost them. But again, this really depends on this frame of consumer responsibility. Because if you don't put those in the compost bin, and if you don't have the infrastructure in your city to make sure that they actually fully decompose, and that's not easy, they only fully decompose in these really specific conditions, they just end up like any other plastics. They end up going in landfills, they end up going in incinerators, and they don't actually behave any differently from traditional plastics in those scenarios. The other thing is that some of these bio-based plastics are made from natural products that need to be farmed. Farming, agriculture is also a major contributor to the climate crisis. So I don't know, I don't mean to like, I don't

mean to equate these two things, but I don't think that it's a real solution. Or at the very least, it comes with its own problems. And those might not be quite as big. But I think it just it leads to this idea that we can take on the problem of plastics by simply making more plastics, which I don't think really has been shown to work at all. There's other issues with like, similar stuff happens with these kind of paper things. Paper has many sort of benefits as a product. You know, the main one is that it actually can biodegrade pretty easily. But like hugely increasing our supply of disposable stuff that we make from paper could be pretty bad for trees, which are very important in our fight for a livable future.

We really need to have things like forests. We need to have especially rainforests intact. And I don't know. So again, I think that all of these things can play some role, but we also just need to rethink the way that we're producing stuff we don't need if we're really going to take on the problem. Definitely. And you know, one of the things that stood out from what you were saying there is that this issue of facilities is a real one, right? Are the facilities there to even recycle what we have? One of the things I remember, I used to live on the east coast of Canada in Newfoundland and we could recycle plastics and we could recycle like aluminum products, but we couldn't recycle glass because that was considered to be too expensive to recycle and the facilities weren't

there and what have you. And I'm sure that that's the case in a lot of other places as well. Even if a product is more recyclable like glass or something like that, the facilities might not be there to actually do it. And I know one of the things that you've reported on in the past is even where a lot of these supposed places to recycle plastic exist, like if you go bring your bag into a Walmart or some other kind of grocery store where it's supposedly going to be recycled, a lot of these things don't actually get recycled. And we're just told they are. And actually they get disposed of like anything else. Yeah, 100%. There has been scandal after scandal of like, this city is actually just taking things from recycling bins to a landfill or this department store has partnered with this big recycling initiative. And there's no evidence that anything that's going into those bins is actually getting recycled most of the time. And like, that is a massive problem of like, lack of corporate accountability. But again, it's not a good solution. If it's this hard and this expensive to recycle this stuff. And if it

doesn't really work very well, then I don't know. I mean, obviously, it is the fault of the corporations who are failing to have those things recycled. But I don't know. I mean, obviously, it is the fault of the corporations who are failing to have those things recycled. But I don't think that the answer then is to be like, do a better job at recycling it. It's to realize that recycling alone cannot fix the problem. Exactly. And it also shows how, you know, even if you are as an individual are trying to do the right thing, that doesn't mean that these structures are set up in such a way to ensure that your individual action actually makes some sort of a difference, right? If you're going out of your way to bring your plastic bags back to get them recycled and they're just going into the landfill anyway,

then what difference is it really making? And I wanted to talk about those bigger issues as well, right? Because one of the things that I think people have become much more aware of in recent years is the scale of this plastic waste problem and how it's on the land, it's through the seas, it's like everywhere seems to be getting clogged up with all of this plastic. Meanwhile, the plastic producers are saying that they plan to create so much more of it. What is the wider impact of all of this plastic waste that is just consuming the planet at this point? I mean, there are so many, and none of them are good. There's the climate impact of plastic production and also plastic disposal. Again, plastics are made from fossil fuels, and so that

means it's really polluting to produce them. You also need to crack. So like separate oil and gas molecules into the byproduct that can be used for plastics, which is another very highly emitting and also like pretty costly process. So there's that. Then if you toss plastics into a landfill or an incinerator that causes more emissions, there's some research that shows that like, even if plastic ends up as litter or as pollution you know, pollution, like in the oceans or on land that also creates more emissions just by virtue of them like sitting out. So that's really bad. All of that is also super, super toxic. So, you know, we definitely should not discount the like local effects of all of that production and processing and burning and incinerators and landfilling. There's lots of carcinogenic and

other toxic chemicals that are associated with those processes. There's the issue of microplastics, which has become such a hugely popular concern that it's almost a meme at this point, I think. But it really is a problem that there's microplastics in all of the food that we eat, and that if you just wave your arm around in the air, you can emit microplastics in all of the food that we eat. And that if you just like wave your arm around in the air, you can emit microplastics in the air. There was a study this week that found that microplastics are widespread in human placenta, which means that we're like, quite literally becoming made of microplastics and of plastics. And you know, one of the reasons that microplastics is an issue is that there's these forever chemicals in plastics, which are really hormone disrupting and have been linked to all sorts

of different issues. You know, there's a million different problems that come with the sort of widespread use and disposal of plastics. But like the profit motive is not changing. And that is, I think, a key reason that we're still, despite all of that, seeing more and more plastic being produced. It's really expensive to recycle plastics properly. It's really, really cheap to make new what are called virgin plastics. And that math is just like the only thing that seems to be driving the industry. And like, is that because they're evil? I don't think that

they're not evil, but they're also like their job is to make profits for their shareholders, right? If they see an opportunity to do that, if they see an opportunity to produce something for very cheap and then sell it to people, they will continue to do that. And we really need solutions that can subvert that sort of awful loop and create some regulations. Or, I mean, frankly, ideally, we could just like nationalize the whole sector to phase it out. But you know, in the absence of those kinds of solutions, at the very least, I think slowly moving toward more restrictions on single use plastic use for the past number of years. But it's like, this year we're going to ban plastic straws and maybe next year we'll do some styrofoam containers and they'll go away. And it's just like so piecemeal and not really getting to like the deeper root of the issue and the structural nature that creates all of this plastic and disposability in the first place that it seems

like the kind of reckoning with the scale of the problem is just not there. Yeah, there have been some proposals I think that go further than the sort of plastic bag bans. There's a bill in the U.S. that gets kind of introduced like every year in some form called break free from plastic pollution. And that actually like would require producer responsibility, as in the producer has to pay for recycling and is fined if products are not recycled. And there's like some legal action that's been kind of floated also a couple years ago, the AG of California said that he'd be looking into plastic producers and fossil fuel companies for their role in the climate

crisis and in ecological crises. And I think that there's some more room for those kinds of solutions. The report that we started this episode talking about from the Center for Climate Integrity sort of proposed that other attorneys general could bring lawsuits and call for investigations based on alleged fraud from the industry. And I talked to somebody who used to be the attorney general of the state of Maryland, who said that he found that really convincing. So I think that the calls for actual damages, like monetary damages could actually make some amount of difference in changing the business model. But like, you're up against a really, really powerful sector here, right? So I mean, it's an uphill battle. But I think there is some movement to move beyond the like, phase out plastic straws only in one individual small

liberal city. Yeah, and hopefully, we'll start to see more of that, right? Whether it's legal action, regulatory action in order to try to rein these things in. Just briefly, I wanted to go back to what you were saying about microplastics there, because, you know, as you say, this is an issue that I feel like is getting more and more traction in recent years as, you know, there's more and more studies kind of finding them in our bodies, all over the planet, in the animals that, you know, share this planet with us. Do we know, is there clear evidence at this point, like the actual kind of human health impacts of having all this plastic around us

and all these microplastics distributed to our bodies? Or is that still something that scientists and medical professionals and whatnot are still really trying to get to the root of? Yes and no. The total impact on human health is not known. And it's because this is an area that, frankly, like most researchers were not even aware would be this bigger problem until pretty recently. But we have some evidence and none of the evidence we

have is good, basically. So like there's some evidence that microplastics have damaged human cells in a lab that like particles lodge into like tissue of flesh and can cause inflammation and things like that. You know, we have some research, actually pretty widespread research on the forever chemicals that are in plastics. That's those PFAS, they're sometimes known as and related sort of forever chemicals, these chemicals that sort of last forever. And those have been shown to be hormone disrupting, which can cause all sorts of issues. I would venture to say that all the research indicates that none of these things are good. And as we see more investigation by

the scientific community, their concerns will only grow. We don't know everything, nothing that we do know is good. Yeah, it's not great, especially like occasionally you hear these stories about people being less fertile and, you know, all these sorts of wider questions about reproduction and about, as you were saying, you know, the hormones that are in people's bodies and stuff like that. And I think that there's a wider question there about the environmental impacts in the sense of like, you know, all the plastics that are around us, all the chemicals that are in everything that we use and kind of the impacts that that is kind of having on our bodies and like human health more widely. And sometimes it feels a bit, you know, kind of conspiracy theory-ish or like verging into like anti-vax adjacent sort of discussions. But it also feels like, I don't know, am I off base to say that that is actually a real concern here, the degree to which all of these chemicals and all

these plastics are, you know, having this deep impact on, you know, kind of the collective health of human beings? Yeah, totally. I mean, there have been some researchers, I think, that have like taken the extrapolation of the analysis too far, but I don't think that that means this is not an issue. Like I, I too sometimes feel like, am I the one who's nuts when I'm like, this is obviously a problem, right? There's like some sort of right wing capitalization on the concern about microplastics to go to like really homophobic places sometimes and things like that. Yeah. Making us all trans or whatever. Yeah, yeah, exactly. The plastics in our water supply are the reasons that all of our kids are

trans or whatever. But one, no. And two, yes, I think that this is actually an issue. I don't think that the research is going to bear out that plastics in the water supply are making us all like queer. But I do think that the research is going to show that maybe the health effects of having all this plastic in our water supply are not so great. So two things can be true. Definitely, you know, the cancers and the issues of fertility and all that stuff, they can't just have come out of nowhere, right? I'm obviously not an expert. But this is this is like my inexpert conclusion after reading stuff and not going for the right wing conspiracy theories. Darna, to wrap up this conversation on plastics, this very important conversation that we've been having, what do you see as much plastic, but is obviously still one that is good to live in and is not, as you were saying, severely compromised because we have gotten rid

of all this disposable plastic that we were previously using. Yeah, I think as always, we need really comprehensive solutions that actually prioritize making people's lives better. And that is not what we've gotten from the industry. The most recent thing that we've seen from the industry is this sort of focus on what's called advanced or chemical recycling, which is a chemical process that's like really, really polluting that they say they're going to use to turn plastics into fuels and other products. That is an example of what is being posed as a solution. I don't think that's a real solution. I think we, I mean, as like corny and twee as it sounds, I think we just need to move towards using fewer plastics into sort of reuse based economy. And I don't think that we're going to be able to do that

just by saying everyone needs to bring their like little bespoke plastic jars to the health food store to fill with lentils that they make their 15 children for lunch. And not everybody needs to go around with a little burlap sack and everything. But like, I mean, if we think about the more comprehensive look at this, if we, for instance, lived in more densely packed cities where there was actually transit that you could use to get yourself to the store so that you wouldn't need to put something in a plastic bag to put in your car for like, you know, an hour where instead you could just say, oh, well, I can just hold this

piece of broccoli in my hand for the like five minutes it takes to walk home or for the two bus stops that it takes to get to my house. I can just throw the broccoli into my cloth bag. I think we could really solve a lot of problems at once. I mean, the other thing is like, I don't think that convenience is a bad thing to want. And I think that there could be a lot more sort of like innovation, especially from the public specter to come up with the materials that are genuinely not that harmful. And that's not to say that like, oh, we're just going to replace all of our like Perrier bottles with Perrier bottles that are made of something else. But like, genuinely, I do think that there have to be ways to make materials out of more sustainable items that we can produce more easily and more efficiently. You know, there's been lots of innovation around producing plastic alternatives for sectors where

they actually are more necessary. Like there's lots of use of plastics in hospitals and in medical procedures and things like that. And I don't think that we're just going to be able to say, oh, no, we're getting rid of plastics. And so you don't get to have your surgical masks or whatever anymore. And so there does need to actually be more effort into coming up with materials that can fit those needs. But I don't think that we can leave the process of coming up with those materials to the people who have an incentive to produce them more chiefly. We can't leave it up to the people who are making a profit off the materials because we've seen time and time again, that just doesn't work. And it doesn't really benefit any of us except for the billionaires who are profiting off of it. Absolutely. I think what you're saying

there is essential, right? On the one hand, we need to have a nuanced conversation where we understand the places where plastics are actually needed and whether we can create something better to replace what's actually in use right now that's not as kind of environmentally harmful. But at the same time, if we are actually going to like get rid of the disposable plastics that we all rely on, we need to think about structurally how we're going to create a way of living where, you know, we don't simply need as much plastics as we did before and what that is actually going to look like. And continuing to rely on the plastics producers and the major grocery chains

and the Walmarts of the world is not going to produce that kind of society. We need to have the kind of collective action, but also the interest from government in order to be able to do something like that and to implement something like that. And right now that doesn't exist, but it can happen. So Darna, it was really fantastic to speak with you, to dig into all this with you. Thanks for taking the time. I really appreciate it. It was such a pleasure. Thanks so much, Paris. Darna Noor is a fossil fuels and climate reporter at The Guardian. Tech Won't Save Us is made in partnership with The Nation magazine and is hosted by me, Paris Marks. Production is by Thank you. And make sure to come back next week. Thank you.