How Big Business Broke Recycling (And Blamed You)

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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!

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

It's not just plastics, many industries have pushed the blame and the responsibility for the pollution, waste and other environmental issues from the producer to the consumer. No industries take any responsibility at all for the mess they leave behind. It's all pushed onto the individual and the costs are covered by public money, not companies.

Once upon a time, in a not too distant past, recycling was subscription based. Milk was delivered to your doorstep in a glass container. You drank the milk, left the empty glass container on your doorstep. A few days later someone returned, picked up the empty glass container and left you another full glass container of milk. The empty glass container they took away, was cleaned and refilled with milk...and the entire process started all over again. That was true recycling! The system we have now is inferior and it's a sham. Ahhhh, the good old days!

Big business has broken the planet.

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.

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.

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.

What? Big corporations aren’t working for the public interest?? OMG 😱 how shocking.

I remember in the ‘90’s. “Switch to plastic to save the rainforests!” (We weren’t told plastic was made of petroleum) So society switched. Now we have a plastic pollution problem, and big plastic is now advertising “we’re devoting (insert fraction of a percent of their annual profit) I doubt anything will get done in my lifetime

The lack of reuse is sad. When I was in college, we'd take weekend trips to Mexico, buy beer direct from the breweries, and they'd come in glass bottles that had VERY clearly been through the bottling machine dozens or hundreds of times, just getting thoroughly cleaned between reuse. Rather than breaking them down and remelting them into new bottles. The breweries even gave you a ton of money to bring back the bottles - more than half the total price to buy! Thankfully, we are starting to see a return to actual reusability. In my town, it's common to be able to get beer in "growlers" that you fill at the brewpub, take home, and fill your cup from; then you just rinse it and refill it on your next trip. Even my local sports stadium has moved to reusable drink cups. Instead of throwing away tens of thousands of cups per game, they have collection containers for the reusable cups next to the trash cans so they wash and reuse them game after game. (I'm sure many get thrown in the trash, I don't see on their website if they actually dig through the trash for them, or if they're just considered lost.)