In 1950, the world produced just 2 million tons of plastic; in 2024, it produced around 360 million metric tons. In the last 20 years, plastic production has doubled, and without drastic policy changes, global plastic production is projected to almost triple by 2060 — half of which will end up in landfills and less than fifth ever recycled.

Against this backdrop, recycling has never come close to delivering the solution the public was promised. A 2025 study in the academic journal Nature found that the global plastics recycling rate has remained stagnant at 9%, against soaring production. The rest is burned, buried, or left to leach into rivers, soils, and oceans. Without management, scientists predict that 121 million metric tons of plastic waste filling in our landfills and polluting the environment will exist by 2050, weighing the equivalent of more than 36,000 Empire State Buildings.

The climate cost of the plastic crisis is enormous. Over 98% of plastics are made from fossil carbons, such as oil and gas, which are the largest contributors to and primary drivers of climate change. Specifically, plastic production and disposal accounts for roughly 3% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. As plastic production continues to soar, so too will its share of global emissions, a cost the planet simply cannot afford.

Big Oil’s Plastic Love

The daylight between what plastic recycling actually delivers and what the public believes is not an accident. It is the result of a deliberate and decades-long effort by the fossil fuel industry to shift responsibility away from producers and onto the public.

Big Oil is the name attributed to the West’s largest oil companies, who maintain a vested interest in plastics. Plastic is a way for oil companies to maintain profitability, particularly as the shift toward renewable energy threatens their traditional business model. Since 2010, fossil fuel companies have invested more than $180 billion into plastic plants in the U.S.

To defend its profitability, Big Oil has engaged in decades of deception. In the late 1950s, in response to Vermont’s ban of single-use bottles, food, drink, cigarette, and packaging companies formed Keep America Beautiful, an anti-litter organization that spent heavily on public campaigns promoting responsible disposable. Rather than addressing overproduction, these campaigns placed the burden squarely on the individual, framing plastic pollution as a litter problem. The message was simple: the problem was not the plastic itself, but individuals failing to throw it away correctly.

In the late 1980s, a growing percentage of the general public believed that plastics were harmful to the environment and public health. Faced with this widespread concern, Big Oil poured hundreds of millions of dollars into convincing the public that plastic was, in fact, largely recyclable. It was the beginning of a coordinated disinformation campaign, including the construction of recycling facilities. Many of these plants shut their doors within five years.

The construction of a recyclable future has proven far more appealing to Big Oil than actually building one. Adding to its sustained effort, the oil and plastic industry launched The Alliance to End Plastic Waste in 2019, a $1.5 billion campaign that promotes plastic recycling and clean up efforts, instead of calling for a limit on plastic production.

Alongside these disinformation campaigns was the creation of Resin Identification Codes, the numbers 1 through 7 imprinted on the bottom of plastic products to indicate their material composition. Created by the plastic industry, RICs give the illusion of a vast and viable recycling industry. In reality, only 30 percent of number 1 and 2 plastics are recycled, numbers 3 through 7 are much more difficult to recycle, and numbers 6 and 7 are not financially feasible to recycle.

The familiar three arrows recycling symbol, inspired by the Möbius strip, was originally conceived to promote genuine recycling. However, because it was never trademarked, the fossil fuel industry was free to co-opt it, transforming the symbol into a deceptive instrument that continues to mislead the public into believing that plastic recycling is achievable.

Big Oil’s tactics have led to California’s lawsuit against ExxonMobil, alleging that the company promoted recycling as a viable option while knowing for decades that it is both technically and economically unfeasible. In doing so, the company encouraged the excessive use of plastic while allowing the enormous volume of plastic waste in the environment to grow.

The Plastics Industry and Global Treaty Talks

The fossil fuel industry deploys lobbyists that resist proposed plastic bans at the federal, state, and local levels. More than 1,500 lobbyists in the U.S. serve both fossil fuel companies and cities, universities, and environmental groups who are fighting the fossil fuel industry that is causing climate change. Operating in a largely unregulated sector with few disclosure requirements, these lobbyists are under no legal obligation to declare such conflicts of interest, leaving environmental advocates unknowingly sharing counsel with Big Oil.

The influence of fossil fuel lobbying is also present at global efforts to address the plastic crisis. Since 2022, negotiations have been underway to negotiate a legally binding treaty on plastic pollution. Lobbyists for the plastics, fossil fuel, and chemical industries have flooded key negotiating sessions in an attempt to weaken or derail the agreement.

At the December 2024 talks in Busan, South Korea, 220 fossil fuel and chemical industry representatives were present, making the plastics lobby larger than the delegation of any single country or regional bloc, including the European Union. Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude oil exporter, led a group of oil-rich nations, including Russia and Iran, that successfully blocked efforts to include binding limits on plastic production.

Stop Plastic Production

The fossil fuel industry has had decades to address the plastic crisis, and it has chosen profit instead. In reality, the plastic crisis cannot be recycled away, which is why EARTHDAY.ORG is calling for a 60% reduction in plastic production by 2040. Sign the Global Plastics Treaty to call on global leaders to create a brighter future, one without plastic pollution.

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Plastic is piling up around us. We keep creating more and more single-use plastics each day and sending them directly to landfills. By making this non-biodegradable waste for so many years, we’ve created a global problem that we can’t seem to escape. We try to give plastics a second life with recycling, but so few recyclables are actually sent to the correct facilities and reused. The writing seems to be on the wall: the plastics crisis is too complex for one simple solution.

But where conventional recycling has failed in dealing with excessive plastic waste, a different sort of recycling promises to excel. Proponents of chemical recycling claim that this process is the future of plastic waste, but others are quick to point out its harmful effects. Policymakers, scientists, and environmentalists continue to debate the question: is chemical recycling going to save us, or only plunge us deeper into an environmental crisis?

What is chemical recycling?

Chemical recycling is an umbrella term encompassing several different technologies designed to extract base chemicals and polymers from plastic. It can be used as a complement to mechanical recycling by breaking down difficult products, such as films and laminated plastics, thus creating a recycling system that is able to process a wider variety of plastic items. By reducing polymers to their “building blocks,” chemical recycling can also produce recycled material with the integrity of virgin plastics. 

The complicated and technical methods of chemical recycling include gasification, hydro-cracking, and most importantly, pyrolysis. This last process holds great potential because it can convert plastic waste into oil that can be used for furnaces, boilers, turbines, and diesel engines, thereby keeping plastics out of landfills while simultaneously reducing our reliance on extracting additional fossil fuels for plastic production. 

In addition to plastic and energy outputs, pyrolysis results in byproducts such as char, a carbon-rich material that can be sold off and used for cookstoves, road surfacing, and improving soil quality. From start to finish, chemical recycling has the potential to be incredibly profitable — one estimate places revenue opportunities in the U.S. and Canada at $120 billion over the next few years. 

Adopting this technology appears to be an obvious fix for our plastics crisis, and the plastics industry would seem to agree, as there are already 11 facilities currently operating across the U.S. alone. But scientists and environmentalists claim that the process is rife with significant environmental and health downsides that only exacerbate existing concerns. 

The bigger (and darker) picture 

The primary concern with chemical recycling is the output and byproducts. Pyrolysis produces gasses in addition to the aforementioned char, which are all highly contaminated from the chemical additives used in the recycling process. Benzene, lead, cadmium, and chromium are just a few of the chemicals involved in chemical recycling that are known to have adverse health effects. Not only can they enter local air and water around these facilities, but thousands of pounds of hazardous waste each year is generated from recycling plants, shipped across the country, and burned miles away from their point of origin. 

These industry practices are especially concerning because studies have shown that these facilities and disposal sites are located in low-income areas and communities of color. Environmental justice advocates say that these communities already suffer health outcomes from other industries that release toxic chemicals into the environment, and these chemical recycling facilities will only make the problem worse. It also requires a significant amount of energy, producing more greenhouse gas emissions and negating the supposed benefits from producing alternative fuel. 

Putting environmental and health concerns aside, opponents say the process requires significant improvements before it can be widely adopted. Even those who support chemical recycling claim that scalability is a sizable obstacle, one that cannot be easily overcome without substantial infrastructure improvements and government investment. But is this the most promising solution that the government should be funding? 

The major problem with chemical recycling is that it absolves the plastic industry of responsibility. By offering this “perfect” solution, companies can continue to produce just as much plastic as ever or even scale up their operations. It does not change the bigger picture, which is that plastic is created from our highly pollutive dependence on fossil fuels. Continuing plastic production with a “business as usual” mindset will only result in more emissions and more overflowing landfills. 

Chemical recycling may seem promising in a vacuum, but the history of conventional recycling reminds us that extending the life cycle of plastic is not sufficient. We need to deal with the issue at the source and demand a reduction in plastic production now. If you agree, sign our Global Plastics Treaty petition to show your support for decisive action to combat plastics. 

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Plastic consumption has quadrupled in the past 30 years, and is expected to triple in the next 30. Meanwhile, global plastic recycling rates have failed to reach two digits. Less than 10% of all the plastic ever produced has been recycled. 

While many of us are doing our part to save the planet and dutifully putting our plastics in recycling bins — it is nearly all one big charade. Why? Because recycling bins do not take your recyclables to fancy facilities to actually recycle them. In fact, just 5% of U.S. plastic waste is properly recycled. Globally, the plastic recycling rate is slightly higher at 9% but both of these numbers indicate that the effort you take to carefully sort your recyclables from your trash is almost for naught because most of our plastic ends up in either landfill or the environment. 

The carefully constructed promise of recycling is nearly all a lie manufactured by the plastic industry. The dream of recycling was invented by them to distract us from the very real issues of plastic pollution. Which is why California’s attorney general has opened an investigation accusing Big Oil of perpetuating the myth that recycling can solve the plastic crisis through its decades-long disinformation campaign. 

California’s attorney general claims that the fossil fuel industry has benefited financially from misleading the public by promoting the idea that plastic could be recycled, thus manipulating the public into buying products containing or utilizing plastics. 

Big Oil was aware that recycling was not a realistic solution back in 1974, when an industry insider revealed there was no economically viable way to recycle most plastics. So how did the lie of recycling take hold? Before we get to that, we have to understand Big Oil and its role in plastics. 

Plastics, Big Oil, and the Recycling Lie

Big Oil is the name attributed to the West’s largest oil companies — the same oil industry that is invested in plastics, which are largely made from petrochemicals. The fossil fuel industry makes $400 billion a year producing plastic. With energy demands shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy, it is an industry that recognizes and has communicated repeatedly to its shareholders that future profits will increasingly come from the production of plastics. In its simplest form, plastic equals profits. 

But in the late 1980s, public opinion began to shift and polls showed an increasing percentage of the general public believed plastics were harmful to the environment and public health. This widespread concern caused Big Oil to start spending hundreds of millions to sell the idea that the majority of plastic could in fact be recycled. So began a massive disinformation campaign which even included the building of recycling centers, ready to deal with the new plastic recycling boom. Many of these plants closed in less than five years. 

In 2019, the oil industry launched a billion dollar campaign, The Alliance to End Plastic Waste, that cynically promoted recycling and clean up efforts, instead of calling for a limit on plastic production and finding plastic alternatives. It helped shift the blame for plastic waste off the producer and onto the consumer. 

Misappropriation of the Recycling Symbol

Coinciding with these ad campaigns and the lie of an expanding recycling industry, came the birth of the Resin Identification Codes (RICs) – also created by the plastic industry. RICs are the numbers, 1 through 7, imprinted on the bottom of plastic products that communicate to consumers the composition of the plastic. It was a brilliant piece of marketing because the industry realized that the average person would see these RIC numbers as proof there was a vast and viable recycling industry out there to be supported. It duped us into believing that plastic is recyclable. 

In truth while, 30% of number 1 and 2 plastics are recycled, numbers 3 through 7 are much more difficult to be repurposed. In fact, numbers 6 and 7 are virtually impossible to recycle. 

The RICs symbol was adapted from the Möbius strip-inspired recycling logo consisting of  three arrows. The three arrow logo was actually conceived of to promote genuine recycling. But the RIC numbers are purely there to trick the public into thinking recycling is achievable and therefore working. Because the three arrow recycling symbol was never trademarked, it has been hijacked by the industry backed RIC number system and become a tool for the lobbyists working for Big Oil.

Lobbyists for Big Oil

The fossil fuel industry has incredibly effective lobbyists that work against any kind of plastic bans at the federal, state, and local levels. Over 1,500 of these lobbyists work simultaneously with cities, universities, and environmental groups which are fighting against the fossil fuel industry. Many of the cities that employ these double agent lobbyists are some of the worst affected by climate change.

The lobbying sector is largely unregulated and likes to keep their client’s details private. So, an environmental group could be working with a lobbyist, who is also contracted to work with a member of Big Oil at the same time. However, because there are so few legal restrictions regarding this lobbying scenario, the lobbyist is not required to declare this duality. 

Not All Recycling is a Lie

Although the world struggles to recycle plastic, other materials like aluminum, paper, and glass are recycled successfully. Aluminum is one of the most recycled and recyclable materials used today. Recycled aluminum saves producers 95% of the energy needed to produce new aluminum. Nearly 75% of all aluminum ever produced is still in use today in the U.S alone. 

Glass is another recycling success story. Germany and Switzerland both have approximately a 90% recycling rate for glass. The U.S. has remained relatively stagnant with around a 30% glass recycling rate but the higher numbers in Europe show that productive glass recycling is achievable. Glass recycling also benefits from the fact that it can be done endlessly without a loss in quality. Given these statistics, is it not time to return to using materials like these once again much more prolifically? Materials such as glass and aluminum are truly energy efficient because they can be so easily recycled.

Stop Plastic Production

Today is America Recycles Day, but Americans can’t effectively recycle because of the fossil fuel industry backed lie that our most ubiquitous material, plastics, can be effectively recycled. Big Oil assured us it was ok to continue to buy and use plastics because they were going to be reused, which is not true. We’re inviting you to sign the Global Plastics Treaty petition to call on the United Nations and governments around the world to commit to a 60% reduction of all fossil fuel-based plastic production by 2040. The fight, Planet vs. Plastics, has only just begun — and it’s a fight we cannot afford to lose.

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“There’s a lot of different rules, and even if there’s an understanding of what can be recycled, there may be different rules in different jurisdictions,” says Jeffrey Raymond, chief of communications and community affairs for Baltimore’s Department of Public Works. “In terms of communicating all this, we have to walk a line between getting people to make recycling as simple as possible, and not making it so intimidating and difficult that they don’t recycle at all.”

Below are a few recycling best practices:

1. No bags. Like really, no bags.

Grocery bags dissolve into potentially harmful microplastics and, in the case of ingestion or entanglement, hurt and kill animals. They’re pretty much the worst. Even though these bags are technically recyclable, you must go to a drop-off area to do that, not your curbside bin.

Plastic bags are the number-one contaminant in recycling loads. Plastic bags act as “tanglers,” getting caught in machinery and shutting down the equipment.

In some cases, like in Montgomery County, Maryland, when plastic bags full of recyclables arrive at the facility, workers are not allowed to open the bags, says Griselda Guillen of the county’s recycling center. That means the entire bag, even if it’s full of water bottles, is considered trash.

Though grocery bags may be posterchildren of plastic pollution, sandwich bags, bubble wrap, plastic wrapping and other flimsy materials that don’t survive the poke test — where the plastics are soft enough to push your finger through it — are also prime candidates for commercial drop-off areas, not the residential recycling bin.

This also means you shouldn’t bag your recyclables. Instead, dump them loosely right into your blue bins.

Solution: Buy a couple canvas bags and get some reusable containers.

2. Small things are big problems

Don’t recycle anything smaller than a credit card. That includes straws, bottle caps, coffee pods, plastic cutlery, paperclips, and a million other tiny things that creep into our daily lives. These objects are too small to be sorted and can jam the recycling equipment.

At Montgomery County, Maryland’s Recycling Center, these contaminants can shut down machines 10–15 times a day, says Guillen.

But what about plastic lids and metal bottlecaps? you might ask.

Helen Lee of Alexandria, Virginia’s Resource Recovery Division points out that “if you put the plastic cap back on the bottle, it becomes bigger than a business card, so it would be captured [by the sorting equipment].”

According to the Association of Plastic Recyclers, when plastics are grinded into pellets, the different numbered plastics have different weights and can be separated easily after that.

That’s not so easy for metal bottlecaps, which tend to fall off glass bottles. You can sometimes bring these metal bottle caps to companies that take scrap.

Solution: Be conscious of what you throw in that recycling bin.

3. Make sure it’s clean, empty and dry

Food waste contaminates whole loads of recyclable material, rendering them useless and fast-tracking them to landfills. In the U.S., food waste contaminates 25 percent of our recycling loads.

“The message we try to have residents remember is clean, empty and dry,” says Lee.

But just how clean?

“I always tend to tell people that their recyclable material should be clean enough to use again,” says Howard Lee of Washington, D.C.’s Office of Waste Diversion. “So, if you’re putting things in the bin and you’re concerned about rodents or rats or anything like that, then chances are your recyclables are not clean.”

With that in mind, be wary of advertising at your local fast-food joint. I recently saw a paper taco bowl that read, “Please Recycle. We Care About the Environment.” That’s fake news. You can’t recycle something covered in salsa and beans. You may have better luck composting that bowl, but again, it’s complicated.

You can also recycle pizza boxes… if they’re not covered in cheese and grease. If they are, you can always tear off the clean part and recycle that.

Solution: Just as the rule states, make sure your recyclables are clean, empty and dry. It’ll take seconds and if everyone did it, it would save tons of recyclables going to the landfill.

4. Combined materials are trash

Recycling only works when like materials are together. Unfortunately, items like plastic-coated coffee cups, laminated paper and paper-bubble wrap envelopes from the mail can’t ever be separated, which means they’re trash.

Solution: Try to avoid buying nonrecyclable materials that can’t be separated. And when you can, shop local to cut down on the carbon footprint of your products.

5. Know your plastics

Not all plastics are treated equally. Rigid plastics are recyclable, labeled by resin codes 1 through 7. Generally, the higher the number, the less recyclable it is. Most recycling centers will recycle plastics 1 and 2 without a problem. Past that, it gets tricky.

Furthermore, a lot of plastic just isn’t recyclable curbside. As noted earlier, you can’t recycle plastic bags or films. Additionally, you can’t recycle anything that can tear like paper. That means no cracker bags, chip bags or cereal bags.

“With plastics, it does get so confusing,” says Erin Hafner of Baltimore’s recycling program. “Clamshell containers, cutlery, plastic straws — all that stuff that ends up in the [recycling] bin.” And it shouldn’t.

Solution: Check your city’s recycling website for the number the city takes.

6. Stop wishcycling

When it comes to recycling, one of the worst things you can do is wishcycle. That’s when we optimistically put non-recyclable objects in recycling bins. When we do this, we contaminate whole loads of otherwise recyclable materials.

“A lot of people wish that this material can be recycled, and it seems like it’s made out of the materials that could be recycled, but sometimes it’s not,” says Helen Lee.

Cities have certain thresholds to meet when they send their recyclables to third-party waste management companies. If they surpass these thresholds — in other words, if there’s too much trash mixed into the recycling load — that entire load could end up in a landfill.

So when you wishcycle, you screw up the entire system.

Solution: Don’t wishcycle.

7. Teach yourself

At the end of the day, we can’t know everything. There’s a bunch of stuff we accumulate over our lives — batteries, electronics, paint cans, toys, clothing, wood — and they, unfortunately, all have separate drop off centers or special instructions for recycling.

Solution: Hit up your local recycling website, and teach yourself what you need to know. This article only gets you so far.

Demand change

Of course, you can change your individual behavior: Clean containers better, only recycle what’s recyclable and most importantly, reduce your overall use.

“[Be] mindful of how you purchase products,” says Howard Lee. “Start with reducing the amount of waste you create. Once you’ve gotten the hang of reducing your waste — maybe not buying so many water bottles — you can start to reuse things that you have and recycle or compost before getting to a landfill.”

But don’t let industry off the hook, either. Manufacturers and lobbyists have created a single-use empire built on this false narrative of recycling as the be-all-end-all solution to our consumption habits. Get mad. Make some noise. Demand solutions, not delays. That materials like plastics are unavoidable in our market economy is not your fault.

Check out EARTHDAY.ORG’s End Plastic Pollution campaign, find additional ways to reduce your plastic waste and make a pledge to reduce your use of plastic.

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Two of the biggest environmental crises in the world today are climate change and plastic pollution. There is no question that these two issues require real-time innovation and action in order to minimize the effect they will have on generations to come.

Plastic pollution and climate change are not separate issues, but rather are closely linked in a variety of ways. According to researchers from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, plastic production and disposal resulted in 850 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2019 and may be responsible for up to 2.8 billion tons by 2050. With numbers like these, it’s no secret that many solutions to the world’s plastic problem go hand-in-hand with solutions to the climate crisis.

Stop burning plastic

One avenue to explore is how we manage plastic after it has been discarded by consumers. Most plastic will end up in landfills or in the environment after it is discarded. However, as plastic pollution continues to grow every year, the space to manage these plastics becomes more and more finite. 

One solution nations have found to this issue is to simply burn the waste. This method not only produces toxic gases and disperses pollutants into our air, but also is responsible for 38 percent of all the carbon emitted from plastic pollution. By advancing our capabilities around other plastic disposal methods instead of incineration, we could cut out one third of carbon emissions from plastic pollution. 

These advancements need to come in the forms of more accessible waste disposal units, equitable waste pickup systems and investment in recycling. Recycling comes with many limits, however, and should not be hailed as the be-all-end-all solution by any means. Even more important is focusing on the source of the problem: the industries making all that plastic.

Shift the responsibility for plastic disposal

Another method that could greatly reduce the plastic crisis is to support the creation  and support of policies that make plastic producers responsible for the waste associated with their products. Consumers often do not have many choices other than recycling, which has been shown to be ineffective in solving the world’s plastic waste issue. 

However, large corporations do have the resources to manage waste and therefore should be responsible for shouldering the burden that plastic places on their consumers. A few examples of how producers can do this is through national buyback programs that incentives the collection and proper disposal of plastics and requires producers to use a minimum amount of recycled materials in their packaging.

These shifts are especially important in places like the United States which produces more plastic packaging waste per capita than any other country. Sign our petition to support the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act, which can make progress by requiring plastic producers to assume responsibility for their products.

Give consumers a fair choice

One final way that we can greatly reduce the impact of plastic is to invest in plastic alternatives and to support plastic policies, such as plastic bans, in all levels of governments. For the average consumer, plastics are almost unavoidable due to a lack of alternatives and overwhelming use of plastic in everyday goods. Alternative packaging options, such as biodegradable food containers, and policies that demand the use of less plastic can help consumers cut their plastic use.

Along with making it easier for consumers to reduce their plastic use, there are some ways we can all lessen our plastic footprints now. We can use reusable grocery bags, buy more glass or paper packaging and educate ourselves on the brands we decide to buy from. To help you get started, read our blog about making your bathroom plastic free without breaking the bank! These steps may seem small but if everyone took the time to practice them, we as consumers could have a great impact on plastic pollution as well.

Use your voice, challenge yourself to go plastic free and encourage those around you to act as well. Take the pledge to act on plastic pollution and use EARTHDAY.ORG’S Plastic Footprint Calculator to see the impact your plastic use is having. With collective action we can create a future free of plastics and give generations to come a more stable and healthy environment.

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Can anyone remember the last time a pickup line worked? Or wasn’t steeped in patriarchal presumptions? Me neither, and this is coming from someone who loves wordplay.

This year, impress your crush with a photo of our lines of collected trash from our most recent cleanup. Oh, they’re intrigued? Now, they want to join a cleanup? Tell them to take part in the Great Global Cleanup!

1. First you swept litter from the street. Then you swept me off my feet.

Looking for a way to show your love for that special someone? Why not think outside the box (of chocolates) and dedicate an Act of Green on their behalf. A great starting point is right where you live: Do a quick cleanup of your street.

Local cleanups also save your community money; according to a survey of communities on the West Coast, it costs $13 per person to clean up and prevent litter and waste from becoming marine debris (that $13 could be spent on giving everyone some vegan, fair-trade chocolate!).

2. Let’s get trashy tonight

Frustrated that the town’s hottest new restaurant is full tonight? Can’t believe that your local grocery store doesn’t carry your partner’s favorite chocolate? Feeling guilty about all the times you purchased flowers, only to realize how damaging it is to the environment?

Before you and your partner get too tired from wine, consider taking 10–20 minutes to clean up the park you both frequent on lazy Sundays. To make it spicy, see how many different items of litter you can find; the average beach cleanup yields 350 different types of litter! You can even make it a contest: Whoever finds less kinds of litter must pay for dinner or do the dishes.

3. My love for you can never be reduced / reused / recycled

Let’s be real: Recycling is one option to prevent waste from ending up in the natural environment, but it’s not the bestoption. In fact, recycling is littered (pun intended) with problems and shortcomings, from aspiration recycling to flat-out doing it incorrectly — leading to a contamination rate of almost 25% in U.S. recycling bins.

Instead, organize or volunteer for a cleanup — a great way to educate others on how to reduce overall consumption (especially plastics) and clean up what’s already out there. 

4. There’s only one butt I want to see tonight, and it’s not from discarded cigarettes

Cigarette butts are the most common item found in cleanups around the world, accounting for more than one-third of all collected litter. And it makes sense: Cigarettes are small and easy to discard. Plus, Hollywood has made flicking them away before putting on shades look so damn cool.

But what’s not cool is how pervasive cigarettes are in our environment. What’s worse, 98% of a cigarette’s filter is made up of plastic that’s non-biodegradable. So, the next time you’re in the company of a smoker, remind them to properly dispose of their cigarette: No ifs, ands or butts.

5. We should pick up trash while listening to Compost Malone this Valentine’s Day

My colleague Sam, who runs our MobilizeU program, is a big Post Malone fan. She’s an even bigger fan of composting, because food waste makes up a large portion of greenhouse gas emissions. In America, the average person wastes a pound of food per day.

Typically, when we think of waste, we think of plastic bottles and Styrofoam, but let’s not let food waste off the fork so easily. Next time you have excess food or leftovers, ask yourself: Can I be better now, better now, with food waste not around, not around?

6. My love for you is like the amount of trash in our waterways: overflowing

You think I was going to let recycling off that easily? Think again, buddy. Right – recycling. We have a global waste problem, and it doesn’t help that only 9% of plastic ever made has been recycled.

Often, the waste we throw away does just that — it goes away to our waterways, which affects both our drinking water and the wildlife that depend on clean and toxic-free water. On average, nearly one million marine animals will die each year to due plastic-related illness, ingestion or suffocation.

And toward the end of the night…

Now, if you are as hot (like our planet is becoming) and heavy (from the crushing amount of waste piling up) like I am, there’s good news: You can tackle our planet’s out-of-control waste today.

Earth Day Network’s Great Global Cleanup removes billions of pieces of waste from our shared public spaces, waterways and backyards. Join thousands of existing cleanups or organize one on your own. No matter what, the path to a cleaner future starts with you.

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Plastic, plastic, plastic. The prolific use of plastic in our world is staggering — humans have created some 8.3 billion metric tons of the stuff, the equivalent 800,000 Eiffel Towers. 

Plastic pollution is a problem because of its long-lasting effects — this petroleum-based, man-made material never fully degrades. According to estimates by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, one plastic bottle takes at least 450 years to break down. Recent research suggests that worldwide, only 9 percent of plastics ever made have been recycled. 

With numbers like this, it can be discouraging to try to tackle the problem. We find plastics littered from rivers to streets, ingested by land animals and aquatic species alike. But small lifestyle changes, education and outreach efforts can add up to make a big difference. Here are five individual actions you can take today to cut plastic pollution.

1. Reduce, reuse, recycle, refuse

Tossing your plastic package into the recycling bin used to feel like a win, but after China and other Asian countries stopped taking our plastic waste in 2018, these packages have been piling up overseas. The bottom line: Recycling is not as straightforward as many of us once thought.

Recycling is tough, but to ensure your recyclable waste gets where it needs to go, check out our 7 common recycling mistakes and tips. Of course, refusing plastics in the first place or opting for alternative products is a surefire way to reduce your impacts.

2. Become a citizen scientist for Earth Day with Earth Challenge 2020 

If you’re itching to become even more active in the fight against plastic pollution, look no further than Earth Challenge 2020, the largest ever citizen science initiative. Earth Challenge 2020 is a mobile app that empowers everyone to be a citizen scientist. Citizen scientists who use the app can enter data and answer a handful of research questions, one of which explores the extent of plastic pollution in their area. 

3. Participate in The Great Global Cleanup

Another exciting opportunity to spearhead the end of plastic pollution is Earth Day Network’s campaign The Great Global Cleanup. This event aims to be “The Largest Environmental Volunteer Event in History” as a celebration of citizen science and the strength of community. There are many existing cleanup events events already in the works. If there is no cleanup already organized in your area, you can register a cleanup of your own. 

4. Support policy change 

While there are many lifestyle shifts and actions that each of us can take as individuals, ending plastic pollution requires a two-pronged approach. This includes innovations in technology and policy changes. The list of cities, states, businesses and entire countries that are placing bans on plastics continues to grow, providing a reason for hope.

California has become a leader in the United States, becoming the first state to ban single-use plastic bags. Canada also recently pledged to ban single use plastics completely by 2021. You can support these global efforts by signing petitions, communicating with your local representatives and supporting coalitions dedicated to stopping plastic pollution.  

5. Take the pledge to End Plastic Pollution

There’s no need to sit idly by while plastic piles up. Knowledge is power, so get educated and spread the word. Take advantage of Earth Day Network’s many resources, such as the Pledge to End Plastic Pollution and plastic calculator. If you enjoy a good read, check out the Plastic Pollution Primer and toolkit. 

More than 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic are not just going to disappear — steer progress the way you want to see it. Between making your weekly grocery lists, volunteering in your community and spreading the word, bringing down plastic pollution is something we can all tackle together. 

The post 5 ways you can tackle plastic pollution appeared first on Earth Day.

It’s gameday, and I’m at a bar with crowds of thirsty fans. As an avid Cleveland Browns fan, a beer seems appropriate, even necessary, to hurl myself into another disappointing Sunday.

I order a beer from the bartender, and he responds, “Bottle, can or draft?” I see a cooler under the bar, filled with aluminum cans and glass bottles. Next to it are stacks of plastic cups.

To my surprise, a plastic cup jumps up and says, “I’m cheap, I’m flexible and I‘m unbreakable. Better yet, I’m recyclable. Order a draft and drink out of me.”

“What’s that number on your back?” says another voice, this one coming from the cooler. It’s a glass bottle, rolling across the ice.

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” says Plastic Cup.

“It’s a ‘six,’” says a new voice. It’s an aluminum can, his metal top peeking out of the mound of ice.

Quite the party down here.

The “six,” of course, refers to the resin number imprinted on the bottom of containers to identify the type of plastic. “Six” is polyurethane, which isn’t recyclable in most places despite the cup’s stubborn protest.

“Hush, throw me in the recycling bin after you’re done,” says Plastic Cup, turning to me. “You’ll be fine.”

“Don’t trust him!” says Glass Bottle, nearly falling out of the cooler. “That’s called wishcycling, and it’s just as bad as not recycling at all. This one plastic cup could even contaminate a whole load of otherwise recyclable materials.”

“Don’t pay attention to him,” says Plastic Cup. “You can recycle me… kind of,” it mumbles. “Well, here. Just look at your local municipality’s website. There are probably specific instructions about how to recycle me there. Just Google — ”

“No, it’s okay,” I say. Growing impatient and thirstier, I decide against the plastic cup, which seems too problematic anyway. Dejected, Plastic Cup joins its untouched comrades in the stack. I move onto the next choice: glass or aluminum?

“Glass, on the other hand is completely recyclable,” says Glass Bottle.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” says Aluminum Can.

“Please, glass is infinitely recyclable,” says Glass Bottle. “Just keep melting me down and building me up. I’m even made of recycled glass. How do you explain that?”

“Sure, you are,” says Aluminum Can, rolling not-so-gracefully across the other cans. “But you’re one of the lucky ones. Only about a third of glass gets recycled here in the U.S. Meanwhile, 75 percent of all aluminum is still in use today, a testament to our durability,” he says, flexing his tab. “If you didn’t know, aluminum is the most recyclable of all materials.”

The game has officially started and I’m still without a beer or a proper container in which to consume it.

“That doesn’t seem right…” says Glass Bottle, a little wavering.

“To be recycled, glass usually has to be separated by color,” says Aluminum Can, getting more brash now. “But when glass breaks, those different colors get mixed.

“But, but — ”

“Plus, that metal bottlecap you think is so great isn’t even recyclable!” the Aluminum Can, a bit of a bully, yells. “YOUR WHOLE EXISTENCE IS A LIE.”

Defeated, Glass Bottle finally disappears under the ice.

“Did I mention, aluminum is the most profitable of all recyclable products?” says Aluminum Can, turning toward me now. “Some third parties pay as much as $800 a bale — money that goes directly to your local economy. Plastic fetches far less, and glass is lucky if it will sell for anything.”

All this is true, though I could do with less arrogance and more beer.

“So, what will it be?” says the bartender. Having just witnessed a lunchroom battle between three inanimate options, I’m speechless.

“Ah, they got you all confused, huh?” says the bartender. “Listen, you may be surprised to find out how many of the products we use every day are very difficult to recycle. We should push our local governments to make it easier for us to recycle products from a wider range of materials. And we should push producers to use recycled material in their products, so the waste we do recycle has a place to go.”

Perhaps sensing my confusion, my oddly knowledgeable, deus ex machina of a bartender grabs a pint glass and pours a beer.

“Don’t blame yourself,” he continues, placing a full glass in front of me. “Recycling is just one of the many facets of America’s waste management problem — we should also consider the ways to produce less waste in the first place.”

Here’s to finding ways to forgo recycling — which is, at best, an inefficient and expensive, if well-intentioned, journey for our materials. And here’s to another disappointing game.

The post A plastic cup, a glass bottle and an aluminum can walk into a bar… appeared first on Earth Day.

I’ve got a dirty secret. Despite working for nearly a decade now on climate and the environment, I am a self-identified (recovering!) aspirational recycler. Since I was old enough to reach the recycling bin, I’ve thrown in any and every conceivably recyclable material, thanking these bottles, boxes and bags for their service and wishing them all the very best on their magical journey to reincarnation.

Milk cartons? Yep. Pizza boxes? Almost every Sunday. Plastic grocery bags? Sure. Plastics #1 to infinity? If it bore the happy triangle of arrows, it went in, destined for an exciting new life as I went about my own. I can tell you now — I was blissfully unaware, and perhaps even a little bit smug, about the great things I was doing for my planet.

So you can imagine my confusion and horror when I first read about a new phenomenon called “aspirational recycling,” also known as “wishful recycling” or “wishcycling.” This insidious phenomenon convinces well-meaning people like me that recycling is a blanket solution to our single-use plastics addiction.

You know that phrase, “Ignorance is bliss?” That’s wishcycling.

But here’s the problem: Recycling is, at best, a Band-aid solution to our consumption and waste-management challenges. And that’s if it’s done correctly.

American recycling: A brief history

When recycling first appeared about fifty years ago, it was a very different beast: American recycling systems in the 1970s, like in many countries today, were dual stream. You had to separate your glass, paper, plastic and metals. It was more painstaking, for sure, but it was also more precise.

Today, the luxury of single-stream recycling means you can toss all your materials — cans and jars and paper, oh my! — into one bin, shut the lid and thank the recycling powers that be for a swift and painless (dare I say, mindless) process.

But therein lies the rub. By simplifying our recycling processes, consumers like me have been given significant power. And with that power, it’s our responsibility to do our homework on what is recyclable. Because recycling badly is worse than just throwing waste right into the trash.

Contamination station

Between 2005 and 2014, single-stream recycling exploded, expanding from 29 percent of American communities to 80 percent. In a 2018 article, Vice President of Recycling Operations for Waste Management Brent Bell explains that with the convenience of single-stream, “recycling rates soared to their highest levels.” Households recycled more, and plants processed millions of tons more recyclable materials.

Bell refers to this period as the “boom years” of recycling. But with boom comes bust: While convenient, single-stream recycling correlates strongly with rising contamination rates.

Contamination happens when non-recyclable items are mixed with recyclables, or when otherwise recyclable items are polluted by things like grease, food, dirt or glass shards. A decade ago, contamination rates for American recyclables ran about 7 percent. Today, about 25 percent of all items in the recycling bin are not recyclable through curbside programs. So what happens to those items?

A one-way ticket to the trash heap

Historically, America’s recycling has gone straight to China, which for decades has imported our recyclables with few questions asked. In July 2017, however, China announced a ban on plastic imports of anything with more than half a percent of contamination. The ban took effect just five months later, leaving American recycling companies scrambling, and American recyclers (myself included) with bad recycling habits to undo.

Contamination takes many forms: the blissfully ignorant (wishcycled materials like potato chip bags and plastic cling film), the lazy (containers that are still greasy, wet or covered in food) and the bizarre. According to Helen Lee, environmental program manager for the Department of Transportation & Environmental Services for Alexandria, Virginia, some of the city’s most common recycling contaminants are dirty diapers, garden hoses, clothes and bowling balls.

You read that right: dirty diapers and bowling balls. Someone has been taking wishcycling to a whole new level.

You’re doing it wrong: Recycling edition

So just what can’t you recycle? Well, let’s start with the low-hanging fruit: Diapers (dirty or clean) cannot be recycled, nor can your bowling ball. Take bowling balls to one of your city’s charitable donation centers, together with the garden hoses and clothes (even in poor or ripped condition, textiles can often be saved from the landfills and recycled through citywide donation bins like Planet Aid).

And what about the more, ahem, traditionally wishcycled materials? Plastic grocery bags are big offender, as are plastic films and plastic wraps. These plastics are really polyethylene film, which includes high-density polyethylene (also known as HDPE or #2 plastic) and low-density polyethylene (also known as LDPE or #4 plastic).

Polyethylene wreaks havoc on recycling processing equipment, getting caught in machines and slowing the recycling process. The good news? Most larger grocery stories and retail chains now collect these so-called “soft plastics” and ship them to proper recycling facilities.

A good rule of thumb (or finger) for identifying soft plastics comes from Recyclebank: If the plastic material can be wrapped around your finger, it doesn’t belong in the recycle bin.

Of course, if you can avoid using plastic grocery bags in the first place, all the better. Tuck a reusable grocery bag in your purse, backpack or desk for your next grocery story run, and skip the headache.

Wide-eyed optimism aside, some items just can’t be recycled curbside. Your mileage may vary depending on your local recycling facilities, but here are some of the items that can’t be recycled in this neck of the woods (Washington, D.C.):

•  Potato chip bags
•  Plastic straws, stirrers and utensils
•  Anything foam, including cups and those pesky packing peanuts

For other items — glass jars, bottles, cans — just keep it clean, guys! In many parts of the U.S., grease won’t cut it. So if you’re hellbent on recycling that pizza box, at least rip off the greasy half and trash or compost it, recycling the dry cardboard. Also, don’t toss your half-empty beer bottle in the recycling bin: Not only are you wasting good beer; you may be dousing otherwise perfectly good recyclable cardboard and paper, rendering it useless for recycling.

In sum, rinse your bottles, jars and cans, then toss them in. Empty containers, full hearts!

Reduce your recycling

Even more, let’s make the case for less recycling in the first place: At best, recycling is an imperfect system. At worst, it’s a long, winding, resource-intensive trip to the landfill.

In the face of our single-use culture, I’m calling for reducing and reusing first. If you must recycle, do your homework and recycle what you can, then swallow your pride and trash what you must.

Blissful ignorance ends here. But if we do it right, at least it doesn’t end up in a landfill.

The post Confessions of an aspirational recycler appeared first on Earth Day.

Recycling feels good. It seemingly gives us power to control our own habits for the benefit of our planet. We can even call people out for not recycling (shame!), reinforcing our own green behavior.

But that feel-good sentiment might just be a placebo effect.

Sure, recycling beats throwing something right in the trash, but tons of our recyclables still end up in landfills or oceans (literally, tons), making a mess of ecosystems. A recent study suggests only 9 percent of the world’s plastic is even recycled.

In other words, recycling is often just another word for a long, expensive detour that a plastic bottle takes on its way to a landfill, where it slowly breaks down over hundreds of years. If we’re lucky, that plastic won’t be ingested by a bird, fish or any other mammal that we end up eating.

So why does recycling make us feel so damn good? Part of the problem, and persuasion, of recycling is the narrative developed to support it.

Fossil-fueled stories

If our answer to plastics has always been to recycle, why do we still have such a big plastics pollution problem? Maybe it’s because we’re focusing on recycling instead of the source of the problem: the industries making all that plastic.

“Industry advocacy groups push recycling as a be-all-end-all process,” says Earth Day Network End Plastics Pollution Campaign Manager David Ayer. “They’re putting all their money into waste management, advocating recycling and teaching people how to recycle better.”

This narrative of recycling is an industry sleight of hand, shifting the blame of plastics pollution onto the consumer. Plastics manufacturers can continue to produce single-use plastics, and businesses can package products in plastics, without retribution. Afterall, if a Sprite bottle washes up on the beach, no one’s fining The Coca-Cola Company. Instead, they’re asking, “Why wasn’t that recycled?”

Recycling forces consumers to take responsibility for managing this plastic waste, rather than question why we need single-use plastics in the first place — especially when alternatives exist. For example, both aluminum and glass have smaller carbon footprints and don’t leak dangerous contaminants found in plastics.

Contrary to the popular narrative, the real solution shouldn’t be recycling. It’s time to focus on the other two Rs in the trinity of waste management: reducing and reusing.

The recycling line

We all know that triangle icon, the one that represents a utopian world where reduce, reuse and recycle are all treated equally, free to coexist in a world where waste doesn’t exist, and if it does, is recyclable.

That triangle should really be a line, one where “reduce” is at the far left. “Reuse” should follow. At the far right of that line — nearly off the page — should be “recycling,” a last resort. Certainly not a first-order action that should make us happy or proud.

It doesn’t help that we don’t really know how to recycle. We often wish our recycling habits are working, the basis of wishful recycling, when we optimistically put nonrecyclable objects in recycling bins. Unfortunately, hope and optimism doesn’t sort our materials, and when we contaminate our recycling bins with food waste and other nonrecyclables, everything in the recycling bin is wasted and sent to the landfill.

“It’s hard to balance the two sides of the seesaw,” says Ayer. “We really need to recycle better, but also recycling is one of the last steps you should be taking.”

How did we get here?

When recycling first hit the scene in the ‘70s and ‘80s, things were different. America’s recycling system was multi-stream, meaning different recyclable materials went into different containers. People spent more time sorting recyclables, washing glass bottles, removing labels and ensuring their blue bins were free of food waste.

At the turn of the century, that all changed. China was a booming manufacturing market and needed all the raw materials it could get, so the country took all our recyclables, regardless of quality. This

demand, combined with China’s lax environmental regulations, shifted global recycling from multi-stream to single-stream. People put all their recyclables — glass, paper, plastics, food scraps, pizza boxes, Styrofoam, whatever — into one bin, which waste companies collected and sent to China for a hefty sum.

With all this plastic coming into China, trash islands popped up, waterways and oceans filled with plastics and animals made snacks out of bottlecaps and bags. Meanwhile, countries like the U.S. ignored it. They kept collecting whatever passed as recycling and shipping it to the other side of the world. Out of sight, out of mind.

That all stopped in 2018, when China, eager to address its environmental problems and improve its public image, abruptly banned plastic imports of anything with more than 0.5 percent contamination. America’s current recycling contamination levels are 25 percent, meaning one of four items in our recycling bins shouldn’t be there.

In other words, when China stopped accepting our poor recycling habits, we were left holding the trash bag.

Purging plastics

Over the last 20 years, we’ve forgotten how to recycle. China’s decision to refuse our plastics corresponded with a public outcry over plastic pollution, forcing us to question recycling and the very existence of plastics in our lives.

So, where do we go from here?

At the individual level, we can always get better at recycling, relearning what we knew 30-plus years ago. Self-educate, compost what you can, sort your plastics, learn what your local municipality recycles and swallow your pride by putting your trash in the trash.

But we must go bigger. Despite what the old recycling narrative has taught us, plastics is a top-down problem. Unless we stop producing single-use plastics at our current rate, we will never end plastic pollution.

With recent public outrage over the state of plastics, some companies and venues have pledged to reduce their plastic use in the next decade. Cities have banned straws outright and more cities are charging for plastic bags at grocery stores. San Francisco airport just banned the sale of disposable plastic water bottles.

These are good, small steps toward what is hopefully a full-on plastics purge.

“It comes down to determining which types of plastic are absolutely necessary — medical supplies, a few types of food packaging — and making those out of the most highly recyclable plastics we have,” says Ayer. “Everything else we have to cut off.”

Ayer grounds his point with a helpful analogy: If you came home and your sink was overflowing, you wouldn’t grab a mop — you’d turn off the water. To end plastic pollution, we need to get to the source of the problem.

Tell local leaders to pass plastic ban legislation. Organize plastic cleanups and take photos of what you find. Above all, hold plastics producers accountable. Tell them you’re serious about ending plastic pollution.

Find additional ways to reduce your plastic waste, make a pledge to reduce your use of plastic and stay updated on news about the fight to end plastic pollution. April 22, 2020 is the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Now is the time to mobilize to protect our planet for future generations.

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