A hard-hitting report accuses the giant oil companies and plastic producers of waging a campaign of fraud and deception over their products.
The US-based Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) accuses the fossil fuel and other petrochemical companies of perpetuating their efforts for decades.
Its report, The Fraud of Plastic Recycling, alleges that ‘Big Oil’ and the plastics industry have deceptively promoted recycling as a solution to plastic waste management despite ‘long-standing knowledge that plastic recycling is not technically or economically viable at scale’.
It goes on: ‘By deceiving consumers, policymakers, and regulators about the viability of plastic recycling, petrochemical companies have ensured the continued expansion of plastic production, which has led to a plastic waste and pollution crisis for communities across the country.
‘The costs of managing and cleaning up plastic waste are largely borne by municipal and state governments – and those costs are projected to increase exponentially in the coming decades, given that plastic waste generation in the United States is expected to increase from 73 million tonnes in 2019 to more than 140 million metric tonnes by 2060.’
Chemical recycling ‘unviable’
A further CCI allegation is that the plastics industry has falsely promoted plastic recycling as a means to achieve a circular economy ‘through misleading and deceptive advertising’.
The report insists that recycling plastics, whether mechanically or through “advanced recycling”, violates the core principles of circularity.
‘Petrochemical companies have no intention to minimize resource extraction, but rather plan to significantly expand extraction for virgin resin production,’ it says.
The concept of ‘advanced recycling’ is challenged as a catch-all term for a variety of processes that use heat or chemicals to break down plastic into its chemical building blocks. ‘The industry argues that the chemical by-products produced through these technologies can be refined and used to manufacture “new plastics and products.” However, this has not been proven viable at scale.’
CCI argues that fossil fuel and other petrochemical companies should be held accountable for ‘the resulting harms’, much like tobacco and opioid companies.
