The Plastic Wars and Beyond...

While plastic has many valuable uses, we have become addicted to single-use or disposable plastic — with severe environmental consequences. Around the world, one million plastic drinking bottles are purchased every minute, while 5 trillion single-use plastic bags are used worldwide every year. In total, half of all plastic produced is designed to be used only once — and then thrown away (UNEP, 2022).

Facing increased public concern about ever-increasing amounts of garbage, the image of plastics is falling dramatically. State and local officials across the USA have and are considering banning some kinds of plastics in an effort to reduce waste and pollution. But the industry had a plan; a way to fend off plastic bans and keep its sales growing. It would publicly promote recycling as the solution to the waste crisis — despite internal industry doubts, from almost the beginning, that widespread plastic recycling could ever be economically viable.

The strategy — and doubts — are revealed in “Plastic Wars,” an investigative documentary. With the plastic industry expanding like never before and the crisis of ocean pollution growing, FRONTLINE and NPR investigate the fight over the future of plastics (PBS, 2020).

Facing a growing public outcry over the plastic pollution crisis, some of the world’s biggest consumer brand companies have promised to dramatically boost recycling. Yet some of those same companies have made — and failed to deliver on — similar promises in the past. A review of corporate commitments by FRONTLINE has found that three major brand companies and an association of plastic bag makers — all of which have recently pledged to increase the recycled content of their plastic packaging and bags — have fallen short of ambitious recycling-related goals in the past (PBS, 2020).
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https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/film/plastic-wars/
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/the-plastic-industry-is-grow…
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/companies-new-pledges-to-boo…
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/plastics-industry-insiders-r…
https://www.unep.org/interactive/beat-plastic-pollution/
https://plasticsrecycling.org/library
https://www.epa.gov/facts-and-figures-about-materials-waste-and-recycli…
https://ourworldindata.org/plastic-pollution
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/plastic-trash-in-sea…