How Big Business Broke Recycling (And Blamed You)

Recycling has been the gold standard for fighting pollution for decades. But most plastics can’t be recycled and the companies that push for recycling are the ones often generating the most emissions and waste in the first place. Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant looks at how we have been told to “reduce, reuse, recycle” to shift the responsibility from companies to the individual.

Based on the book by Jenny Price.

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[clutchyfinger]

We need to stop using words like "lobbied". It's bribes.

[adpirtle]

It's always nice to be reminded that our throwaway society is literally only decades old. It's not too late to change.

[freeguy]

Nailed it with this one line: "it's cheaper for companies to make more plastic than to recycle it"
= all about the bottom line💰

[kanderson-oous]

Unintended consequences: when my community banned single use plastic bags, the grocery stores started using HEAVIER plastic bags that claim they can be re-used hundreds of times. So they're using MORE plastic in each bag - almost all of which are still thrown out.

[xEventHorizonx]

I'm so glad PBS is making these videos to inform the public. I hope they cover how industries send microplastic contaminated wastewater to local wastewater treatment plants that are not designed to filter it, allowing for microplastics to go back into the environment and passing the financial responsibility to fix it onto the public.

[pcoristi]

Also, can we talk about the right to repair? I'm getting tired of throwing out appliances because there's no one able to fix them -- for lack of parts, lack of knowledge, lack of accessibility to the area of the appliance that needs fixing. I'm SICK of throwing out toasters and kettles cuz no one can fix them.

I've kept an dehumidifier running for over 15 years because I can take it apart and clean it but I can't with the new one we bought recently

[sunalwaysshinesonTVs]

"Socialism for the rich. Rugged individualism for the rest of us."

[nuhou]

I'm glad to see PBS using the correct framing, which is that this is a problem of production and not one that end-users must take responsibility for individually as you often hear and read in most mainstream media and literature. And it's just wrong that taxpayers are footing the bill for recycling in the form of city-operated recycling centers.

[erezra]

One of the best explainer videos for this issue. I worked as an engineer with plastics for more than 20 years and we avoided recycled plastics because they are so inferior. The motto Reduce, Reuse, Recycle is in descending order meaning we should focus on reducing first and then reusing and use recycling only as a last option because there re so many issues with it. This video shows this wonderfully!

[KJSvitko]

Tax plastic manufacturers to pay for cleaning up the mess they created.

[elinope]

I liked the glass bottle days. I remember some people would do glass blowing with some of the old bottles, made some neat stuff.

[spacecaptain]

Banning "single use" plastic bags is still putting the burden on the consumer, not businesses. All of the products we buy are still wrapped in plastic! Plastic bottles, plastic wrappers, plastic bags inside of cardboard boxes, and plastic liners inside of metal cans. Even Produce is often packaged in plastic for no better reason than to force you to buy 2 peppers or potatoes, or whatever, instead of 1! And the city still forces us to wrap our trash in plastic bags before throwing it out, which not only creates more plastic trash, it prevents our biodegradables from biodegrading!

[bobyoung]

One of plastic's biggest investments isn't R&D or manufacturing. It's Congress.

[perkytxgirl]

Plastic bag 'recycling' is the latest scam in this story. Plastic bag bins are at every grocery store but 90% of bags put in those bins end up in landfills or incinerators. 10 % end up at recycling plants that theoretically recycle them but probably not.

[evalawler]

Exxon's net profit in 2019 was $14.34 billion. They committed $1.5 million that year to the Recycling Partnership - less than 1 percent of their net profit.
The CEO made $23.5 million in 2019.

[Holmesy]

The fact that this only has 274k views is an utter disgrace.
This video should be being played on news outlets, school, yt front page, absolutely everywhere.

The guilt of recycling shouldn't be on me, it should be in the massive corporations making it in the first place, and govts that allow it.

[Kiraiko]

I'll try to find the article because I can't remember which university it was (not a huge one but a pretty big one) where student news staff basically discovered that the school's recycling program was a scam. The state had essentially rolled out an incentive program encouraging schools to recycle more and gave the ones that signed up a bunch of green trash cans and money to get a recycling program started. This university had taken the money, put out the trashcans, made a big deal about to the student body and I wanna say even fined them if they were caught misusing the recycling cans by throwing away regular trash in them, but never actually did anything to implement a recycling program. All the trash went to the same place. They just pocketed the money.

[tylergibson]

The companies that lied should be held accountable for fixing the monster they made.

[timsmith]

I worked in metal recycling for about 5 years, after working cleaning up hazardous waste sites for over 11 years. I was shocked at how greenwashed recycling has been indoctrinated into our vocabulary as this clean green industry
It's not!
Take a look at your cars, school busses, washing machines, lawn mowers, airplanes etc, with all the plastic, rubber, vinyl, cloth, insulation etc, everything non metal and while yes the metal itself can be forever recycled think about where all the non metal ends up, multiply that with the consumption based American Dream and well can we admit that perhaps we have a consumption crisis of epic proportion that needs to be addressed!!

[pythonau]

We never had single use plastic bags. All our shopping bags were collected and used for other things, mostly garbage bags. So they banned the useful shopping bags but they still have several hundred types of single use plastic packaging for everything else. Most of the products shipped in cardboard boxes, like cake mix, have a plastic bag in the box, and we have to buy garbage bags as well, so wheres the saving?