Plastic Recycling is an Actual Scam | Climate Town

hey i was supposed to jump out of this to kind of scare you

but it turns out that's funnier on paper than it is in uh practice

so i hope you don't mind too much boy i got a lot of

plastic here and don't worry i'm going to be putting it in a recycling

bin because i'm not a sociopath

or some kind of libertarian

but here's the thing most of this plastic will end up in a landfill

or burned or in the ocean

and that's because most plastic is not recyclable oh

but it's got the recycling symbol right on it this is the recycling symbol

created in 1970 and this is a resin identification code created by the plastics

industry in 1988 to trick people into thinking plastic was recyclable

and therefore may be okay for the environment plastic recycling is a lie to

sell more plastic i'm rollie williams climate science grad student

and guy who couldn't find a men's jumpsuit

that fit him but a women's jumpsuit is actually kind of working for me

and i hate to say this

but plastic recycling is an actual scam welcome to climatetown beginning of the plastic

recycling as a scam story starts with world war ii uh do i have

your attention now everybody's dad anyway at the beginning of the most camera-ready war

in history the u.s government felt

that a flexible lightweight material might really help our boys give the jerry's the

old piss and vinegar

so the government forced early plastics companies to work together to crank out plastic

and to have little slumber parties where they shared their plastic making secrets

and the modern plastic industry was born also brad totally has a crush on

you oh my god no he does yes he does he told me he

told me he told me since plastic is made out of oil

and natural gas plastic companies sprang out out of existing fossil fuel corporations

and their hot cousins the chemical industry

and the nightmare lobby industry group the society of the plastics industry was born

and i'm pretty sure that's the last we'll be hearing of them in this

video about how the plastic industry scammed america anyway it was their job to

get the american consumer a group of people who had never really bought plastic

to start buying a ton of plastic lucky for them plastic kicks ass plastic

was lightweight cheap it performed better than other substances

and it had the ungodly power of the fossil fuel industry behind it basically

plastics blew through america like measles at an anti-vaxxer water park

but when americans were saving their plastic to reuse it lobby groups just bought

advertisements telling them throw it out every time we'll just make more plastic out

of our unlimited consequence-free supply of fossil fuels

and that's when plastics came up against their first big hurdle on april 22nd

one in every 10 americans took part the public outcry on

that first earth day led to political action well

that actually wasn't going to work for the plastics industry

but they had a compromise they felt would work for everybody they'd lie

so the plastics industry fossil fuel corporations

and a number of other companies formed a front group called keep america beautiful

they got an italian guy dressed him up like a native american stereotype

and then shot this commercial some people have a deep abiding respect for the

natural beauty that was once this country

and some people don't start pollution people can stop it i mean yes sure

they could have just easily made their products less disposable

but why do that

when you can just spend a few million dollars on an advertisement to convince

you it's your fault there's more trash everywhere

and it worked for a

while see the old depressed italian maneuver got people to start throwing their trash

and trash cans and even started some regional recycling programs

but when a louder call to end single-use items like plastic cropped up in

1987 the plastics industry decided it was time to take another trip to scamville

where they were pleasantly surprised to find they were already the mayor okay do

you remember the society of the plastics industry oh my god they're back well

anyway they genuinely did want recycling to work

so they looked into it in the 1980s

and discovered to their horror

that plastic can't really be recycled the same chemical properties

that make it moldable

and flexible also make it degrade after one

or two uses i mean that's not a recycle that's a re-loop-de-loop

but even worse than any of

that recycling is expensive

and labor intensive and making new plastic from fossil fuels is almost always cheaper

forever plastic industry documents clearly concluded

that there were no effective market mechanisms for mixed plastic

and that there is serious doubt

that it can ever be made viable on an economic basis there was never

an enthusiastic belief that recycling was ultimately going to work in a significant way

i think they knew

that the infrastructure wasn't there to really have recycling amount to a whole lot

but even though they knew recycling had zero chance of stopping plastic from just

the world they knew

that if they could get people to believe recycling worked they might have a

chance of stopping an actual plastic ban you know what i'm being too cynical

do we have like a relevant clip i could roll right here

if the public thinks the recycling is working

then they're not going to be

as concerned about the environment well that's not good

but the old society of the plastics industry had a plan

while most plastic could never be recycled technically sun plastic could be recycled

so in 1988 they created a front group called the council for solid waste

solutions and they quietly lobbied nearly 40 states to pass legislation

that required a symbol they created be printed on every single piece of plastic

produced in america enter the resin identification code officially just a way to say

what type of plastic the item is made out of now to be clear

this is not a recycling symbol see the recycling symbol was public domain

as of 1970. so the plastics industry just kind of borrowed it stuck a

number inside and now it's a completely different symbol what do you mean it

looks like the recycling symbol don't you see the number inside of the seven

kinds of rics only ones

and twos are commonly taken

and even they have a slim chance of actually being recycled

but the plastics industry has made sure

that every single piece of plastic has a recycle symbol on it except no

they didn't because that's not a recycle symbol it's a resin identification code

because it's got a number

if the public thinks the recycling is working

then they're not going to be

as concerned about the environment

so whenever the environmental movement would build up a head of steam the plastic

industry and fossil fuels would just pour millions of dollars into recycling campaigns until

calls for plastic reduction died out

then they just pull their funding

and all the recycling initiatives collapse until it's time to promote recycling again for

all the millions of dollars spent touting the wonders of recycling only 10 percent

has ever been recycled well damn daniel what are we gonna do well first

of all we gotta stop treating recycle like it's the beyonce in the destiny's

child of reduce reuse recycle beyonce is reduce reuse

and recycle is the other two second we gotta keep recycling

and i know i know i just spent like eight minutes shooting on recycling

but recyclers are the only people keeping

that number at ten percent

and not zero percent in fact any percent of a massive amount of plastic

is still significant and finally we have to stop thinking about this like it's

a problem we can solve with a quiet little choice at the grocery store

legislation got us into this problem legislation's got to get us out we gotta

pressure our governments to pass a ban on single-use plastics how bad is the

problem great question the plastic lobby has actually passed legislation preemptively banning plastic bans

that's right it's a ban ban

and it's going to murder murder our planet planet

if we can't get a hold of our legal system it's going to take

a group of people working together

so please be one of those people in the description of this video is

a list of all the active plastic legislation

and the groups behind it

if you if you have a second

and let's face it you probably do have a second

if you just watch this video consider clicking on some of these links

and joining these places

because they need all the help they can get thank you

so much for watching climatetown i'll see you next time