Why it’s not worth recycling plastic

For decades, consumers have been led to believe that recycling plastic saves on waste. Unfortunately, it’s not true, says Simon Wilson. And that could have big consequences for the oil business.

A woman pulling a trolley loaded with bags of recyclables © JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images
Is doing this a total waste of time?
(Image credit: © JOHANNES EISELE/AFP via Getty Images)

What’s happened?

A new investigation into the history of plastics manufacturing by US journalists (for National Public Radio) has reignited the policy debate over plastics pollution. NPR turned up a wealth of evidence, from documents and industry sources, that producers of plastics have cynically promoted the virtues of recycling for decades – thus encouraging consumers to think it’s fine to use more – all while knowing full well that most plastic (more than 90%) is never recycled. It is far cheaper and more profitable to make new plastic (from oil and gas) than to recycle it. But in order to keep selling new plastic, the industry had to “greenwash” its wasteful image by embracing recycling, according to Larry Thomas, ex-president of a plastics industry trade association. “If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment,” says Thomas. So vast corporate resources were diverted into intricate “sustainability theatre”.

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Simon Wilson’s first career was in book publishing, as an economics editor at Routledge, and as a publisher of non-fiction at Random House, specialising in popular business and management books. While there, he published Customers.com, a bestselling classic of the early days of e-commerce, and The Money or Your Life: Reuniting Work and Joy, an inspirational book that helped inspire its publisher towards a post-corporate, portfolio life.   

Since 2001, he has been a writer for MoneyWeek, a financial copywriter, and a long-time contributing editor at The Week. Simon also works as an actor and corporate trainer; current and past clients include investment banks, the Bank of England, the UK government, several Magic Circle law firms and all of the Big Four accountancy firms. He has a degree in languages (German and Spanish) and social and political sciences from the University of Cambridge.