Plastic Recycling is an Actual Scam Climate Town

hey was supposed to jump out of this to kind of scare you but it turns out that's funnier on paper than it is in practice so hope you don't mind too much boy got lot of plastic here and don't worry i'm going to be putting it in recycling bin because i'm not sociopath or some kind of libertarian but here's the thing most of this plastic will end up in landfill or burned or in the ocean and that's because most plastic is not recyclable but it's got the recycling symbol right on it this is the recycling symbol created in 1970 and this is resin identification code created by the plastics industry in 1988 to trick people into thinking plastic was recyclable and therefore may be okay for the environment plastic recycling is lie to sell more plastic i'm rollie williams climate science grad student and guy who couldn't find men's jumpsuit that fit him but women's jumpsuit is actually kind of working for me and hate to say this but plastic recycling is an actual scam welcome to climatetown beginning of the plastic recycling as scam story starts with world war ii do have your attention now everybody's dad anyway at the beginning of the most camera-ready war in history the u.s government felt that flexible lightweight material might really help our boys give the jerry's the old piss and vinegar so the government forced early plastics companies to work together to crank out plastic and to have little slumber parties where they shared their plastic making secrets and the modern plastic industry was born also brad totally has crush on you my god no he does yes he does he told me he told me he told me since plastic is made out of oil and natural gas plastic companies sprang out out of existing fossil fuel corporations and their hot cousins the chemical industry and the nightmare lobby industry group the society of the plastics industry was born and i'm pretty sure that's the last we'll be hearing of them in this video about how the plastic industry scammed america anyway it was their job to get the american consumer group of people who had never really bought plastic to start buying ton of plastic lucky for them plastic kicks ass plastic was lightweight cheap it performed better than other substances and it had the ungodly power of the fossil fuel industry behind it basically plastics blew through america like measles at an anti-vaxxer water park but when americans were saving their plastic to reuse it lobby groups just bought advertisements telling them throw it out every time we'll just make more plastic out of our unlimited consequence-free supply of fossil fuels and that's when plastics came up against their first big hurdle on april 22nd one in every 10 americans took part the public outcry on that first earth day led to political action well that actually wasn't going to work for the plastics industry but they had compromise they felt would work for everybody they'd lie so the plastics industry fossil fuel corporations and number of other companies formed front group called keep america beautiful they got an italian guy dressed him up like native american stereotype and then shot this commercial some people have deep abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this country and some people don't start pollution people can stop it mean yes sure they could have just easily made their products less disposable but why do that when you can just spend few million dollars on an advertisement to convince you it's your fault there's more trash everywhere and it worked for while see the old depressed italian maneuver got people to start throwing their trash and trash cans and even started some regional recycling programs but when louder call to end single-use items like plastic cropped up in 1987 the plastics industry decided it was time to take another trip to scamville where they were pleasantly surprised to find they were already the mayor okay do you remember the society of the plastics industry my god they're back well anyway they genuinely did want recycling to work so they looked into it in the 1980s and discovered to their horror that plastic can't really be recycled the same chemical properties that make it moldable and flexible also make it degrade after one or two uses mean that's not recycle that's re-loop-de-loop but even worse than any of that recycling is expensive and labor intensive and making new plastic from fossil fuels is almost always cheaper forever plastic industry documents clearly concluded that there were no effective market mechanisms for mixed plastic and that there is serious doubt that it can ever be made viable on an economic basis there was never an enthusiastic belief that recycling was ultimately going to work in significant way think they knew that the infrastructure wasn't there to really have recycling amount to whole lot but even though they knew recycling had zero chance of stopping plastic from just the world they knew that if they could get people to believe recycling worked they might have chance of stopping an actual plastic ban you know what i'm being too cynical do we have like relevant clip could roll right here if the public thinks the recycling is working then they're not going to be as concerned about the environment well that's not good but the old society of the plastics industry had plan while most plastic could never be recycled technically sun plastic could be recycled so in 1988 they created front group called the council for solid waste solutions and they quietly lobbied nearly 40 states to pass legislation that required symbol they created be printed on every single piece of plastic produced in america enter the resin identification code officially just way to say what type of plastic the item is made out of now to be clear this is not recycling symbol see the recycling symbol was public domain as of 1970. so the plastics industry just kind of borrowed it stuck number inside and now it's completely different symbol what do you mean it looks like the recycling symbol don't you see the number inside of the seven kinds of rics only ones and twos are commonly taken and even they have slim chance of actually being recycled but the plastics industry has made sure that every single piece of plastic has recycle symbol on it except no they didn't because that's not recycle symbol it's resin identification code because it's got number if the public thinks the recycling is working then they're not going to be as concerned about the environment so whenever the environmental movement would build up head of steam the plastic industry and fossil fuels would just pour millions of dollars into recycling campaigns until calls for plastic reduction died out then they just pull their funding and all the recycling initiatives collapse until it's time to promote recycling again for all the millions of dollars spent touting the wonders of recycling only 10 percent has ever been recycled well damn daniel what are we gonna do well first of all we gotta stop treating recycle like it's the beyonce in the destiny's child of reduce reuse recycle beyonce is reduce reuse and recycle is the other two second we gotta keep recycling and know know just spent like eight minutes shooting on recycling but recyclers are the only people keeping that number at ten percent and not zero percent in fact any percent of massive amount of plastic is still significant and finally we have to stop thinking about this like it's problem we can solve with quiet little choice at the grocery store legislation got us into this problem legislation's got to get us out we gotta pressure our governments to pass ban on single-use plastics how bad is the problem great question the plastic lobby has actually passed legislation preemptively banning plastic bans that's right it's ban ban and it's going to murder murder our planet planet if we can't get hold of our legal system it's going to take group of people working together so please be one of those people in the description of this video is list of all the active plastic legislation and the groups behind it if you if you have second and let's face it you probably do have second if you just watch this video consider clicking on some of these links and joining these places because they need all the help they can get thank you so much for watching climatetown i'll see you next time