Utter Trash : (Mis-)Alignment of Plastic Recycling Policies and Human Behavior

Over the last century, humanity has thrown out so much plastic that microplastic particles have been found in every ecosystem in the world, from mountain peaks to ocean trenches. Humans consume a credit card’s weight in microplastics each week, microplastics that infiltrate our cells and fetal tissues. Production continues to escalate despite researchers’ longstanding findings that plastics disrupt human and ecological health. Connecting a half-century of journalism and academic research, this paper examines how plastic pollution became the overwhelming public health crisis and environmental injustice it is today, who is responsible, and why. Messaging from the industry decries consumer wastefulness and admonishes us to use plastic products more responsibly and, above all, recycle. However, this paper finds that as a by-product of fossil fuel production, plastic production has intentionally expanded while recycling has been mismanaged and misrepresented by petrochemical executives. Petrochemical profits have risen due to their efforts, paralleled by the same industry’s successful initiatives to undermine a clean energy transition through climate misinformation campaigns, policy obstruction, and emphasis on individual responsibility. The paper concludes with implications of the industry’s historically contradictory rhetoric and reality regarding plastic production, use, and management for policy to mitigate plastics’ impacts on human wellbeing