Companies whose futures depend on plastic production are trying to persuade the federal government to allow them to put the label “recyclable” on plastic shopping bags and other items virtually guaranteed to end up in landfills and incinerators.

Is there anything more pathetic than a used plastic bag?

They rip and tear. They float away in the slightest breeze. Left in the wild, their mangled remains entangle birds and choke sea turtles that mistake them for edible jellyfish. It takes 1,000 years for the bags to disintegrate, shedding hormone-disrupting chemicals as they do. And that outcome is all but inevitable, because no system exists to routinely recycle them. It’s no wonder some states have banned them and stores give discounts to customers with reusable bags.

But the plastics industry is working to make the public feel OK about using them again.

Companies whose futures depend on plastic production, including oil and gas giant ExxonMobil, are trying to persuade the federal government to allow them to put the label “recyclable” on bags and other plastic items virtually guaranteed to end up in landfills and incinerators.

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  • derf82@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    3 months ago

    The famous ad with the Native American crying about litter? It was literally funded by the single use plastic industry to shift the blame from them producing trash to people not throwing things away. Also, the guy was Italian.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
      0·
      3 months ago

      And yet, it works in that sense. Whatever we’ve done with recycling, bottle deposits, and shaming people has made a real improvement in litter.

      Now we just need to finish getting rid of glass bottles and cigarettes. And we have a win, at least in the context of litter