Plastic pollution impacts nearly every part of our environment and our lives. Beyond the visible pollution clogging our rivers and oceans, toxic plastic chemicals and micro- and nano-plastics have become ubiquitous; they are regularly found in our drinking water, in Arctic snow, and in our bodies. Plastic is also made from 99% fossil fuels, and so a major contributor to the climate crisis, demonstrating the importance of knowing how to reduce plastic pollution.

In the last decade, a global movement demanding action has grown in response: A global 2019 Ipsos poll found that 71% of consumers worldwide want to ban single-use plastics. But plastic production by the petrochemical industry is on the rise. Why?

Big Oil, seeing demand for fossil fuels decrease as electric vehicles and other climate solutions replace oil and gas, is now focusing on the toxic stew of chemicals and petroleum that we call plastic. They are banking on the fact that plastics are much less widely understood as a fossil fuel problem – even though they are currently responsible for over 12% of global oil demand. The the industry has declared “plastics is the future,” and they plan to triple production in the next 30 years, based on an uptick in demand stemming from their own marketing.

Polluting industries have been employing similar strategies for most of the last century. After World War II, companies recognized that they could increase profits by pushing single-use packaging. When this turned into a waste problem, they disguised their culpability by putting the responsibility on their customers. The 1953 “Keep America Beautiful” campaign began successfully selling the idea that the problem was individual consumers rather than the corporations creating it, a misperception that many people hold even today.

Another persistent myth? That we can recycle our way out of this problem. For decades, companies claimed plastics are easily recyclable. Scientists estimate that only about 9% of plastics generated globally are recycled due to contamination, the harmful chemicals used in plastics, and the need to sort the many different varieties. The industry claims have gotten so overblown that the California attorney general filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil for its deceptive promotion of recycling plastic as a solution. Enabling more-effective recycling systems to manage existing plastic pollution is a part of the solution, but it is not enough. The only way to know how to reduce plastic pollution and to really solve the problem is to reduce the amount of plastic being produced in the first place.

Read the full article about reducing plastic pollution by Ana Lê Rocha, David Azoulay, Gary Cohen, Kabir Arora, and Von Hernandez at Alliance Magazine.