Commentary: Circular arguments accompany plastic’s circularity efforts

A report titled “The Fraud of Plastic Recycling: How Big Oil and the plastics industry deceived the public for decades and caused the plastic waste crisis” has been issued by an advocacy group.

Like-minded advocacy groups quickly endorse the report, possibly having issued a similar one within the previous 24 months.

But trade organizations representing plastic producers and users quickly issue statements countering the data and viewpoints presented in the latest report, vowing that genuine recycling progress is being made.

Media outlets then put together articles with attention-getting headlines and attempt to present points and counterpoints from the parties involved.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

For people who have been involved in the recycling industry for a duration measured in decades rather than months or years, the above portrayal could seem accurate while also being deeply cynical.

Many of the parties involved in the current debate, however, deserve much better than cynicism.

The Washington-based Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) issued the aforementioned report and is among many global advocacy groups with backers that have observed a world abounding with discarded plastic at the same time the global plastic recycling rate remains alarmingly low.

Those who work and invest to increase that recycling rate, however, do not make for a logical enemy.

Most people involved in the plastic recycling industry are not blind to what has contributed to the current circumstance: For several decades, plastic producers have gained market share while working in tandem with manufacturers to make plastic products either in places that lack solid waste or recycling infrastructure or shipping them there.

Several decades-old quotes by former oil industry executives cited in the CCI report portray a petrochemical industry that long considered recycling an unnecessary sideshow that was most unwelcome on the balance sheet.

More recently, some of those same multinational companies have invested substantial amounts in recycling. Should these investments have staying power, the advocacy groups can perhaps take credit for their messages being heard.

At the same time, a number of existing recycling companies and entrepreneurs without petrochemical connections or deep pockets have made investments of their own.

For the plastic recycling rate to rise beyond its current level (well behind that of paper and even further behind metal), these financial commitments would seem to merit praise and support, not a campaign vilifying recycling.

Even with legislative intervention to curtail plastic production in the United States and elsewhere (which often is a goal of this strain of recycling skeptics, though not another equally skeptical cluster), petrochemical production and its virgin plastic byproducts will not disappear. Likewise, the need to recycle what already has been produced will remain for decades.

Skepticism regarding genuine progress in plastic recycling ideally does not have a future that will last another half century. In the meantime, support for the people who collect and reprocess the world’s discarded plastic should be universal, even from the most cold-hearted cynic.