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When Is “Recyclable” Not Really Recyclable? When the Plastics Industry Gets to Define What the Word Means.
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Is there anything more pathetic than a used plastic bag?
They rip and tear. They float away in the slightest breeze. Left in the wild, their mangled remains entangle birds and choke sea turtles that mistake them for edible jellyfish. It takes 1,000 years for the bags to disintegrate, shedding hormone-disrupting chemicals as they do. And that outcome is all but inevitable, because no system exists to routinely recycle them. It’s no wonder some states have banned them and stores give discounts to customers with reusable bags.
But the plastics industry is working to make the public feel OK about using them again.
Companies whose futures depend on plastic production, including oil and gas giant ExxonMobil, are trying to persuade the federal government to allow them to put the label “recyclable” on bags and other plastic items virtually guaranteed to end up in landfills and incinerators.
They argue that “recyclable” should apply to anything that’s capable of being recycled. And they point to newer technologies that have been able to remake plastic bags into new products.
I spent months investigating one of those technologies, a form of chemical recycling called pyrolysis, only to find that it is largely a mirage. It’s inefficient, dirty and so limited in capacity that no one expects it to process meaningful amounts of plastic waste any time soon.
That shouldn’t matter, say proponents of the industry’s argument. If it’s physically capable of being recycled — even in extremely limited scenarios — it should be labeled “recyclable.”
They are laying out their case in comments to the Federal Trade Commission as it revises its Green Guides, documents that define how companies can use marketing labels like “recyclable” or “compostable.” The guides are meant to curb greenwashing — deceptive advertising that exaggerates the sustainability of products. They were last updated in 2012, before the explosion of social media advertising and green influencers; the agency declined to answer questions about the revision or give an idea of when it will be done.
The push for a looser definition of “recyclable” highlights a conundrum faced not just by companies represented by the Plastics Industry Association, but by members of the Consumer Brands Association, whose plastic-packaged products fill grocery shelves across the world. (Neither trade group, nor ExxonMobil, wanted to elaborate on their positions advocating for a more liberal use of the word “recyclable.”)
Under increasing pressure to reckon with the global plastics crisis, companies want to rely on recycling as the answer. But turning old plastic into new plastic is really, really hard.
Products made with dyes, flame retardants and other toxic chemicals create a health hazard when they’re heated for recycling. That severely limits the types of products you can make from recycled plastic. And most items are too small for companies in the recycling business to bother sorting and processing, or they are assembled in a way that would make it far more costly to strip them down to their useful elements than to just make new plastic. Plastic forks? Straws? Toys given out in fast food meals and party favor bags? Never actually recycled. In fact, only 5% of Americans’ plastic finds new life.
Environmental experts worry that if the FTC sides with the industry, companies could slap the “recyclable” label on virtually anything.
Though the agency only pursues a few greenwashing cases a year, its guides — which are guidelines instead of laws — are the only national benchmark for evaluating recycling claims.
They’re used by companies that want to market their products in an honest way. They also serve as a reference for state officials who are drafting laws to try to reduce plastic waste.
By 2032, for example, most single-use packaging sold in California will need to be recyclable or compostable.
What good will such laws be, environmental experts worry, if those words mean nothing?
For at least three decades, the industry has misled the public about what really is recyclable.
Take a close look at any plastic product and you’ll likely see a little number stamped on it called a resin identification code; it distinguishes what kind of plastic it’s made of. Plastic bags, for example, are labeled No. 4. Only some No. 1 and No. 2 plastics are widely recyclable. In each case, the number is surrounded by the iconic “chasing arrows” symbol, which has come to denote recyclability, regardless of whether that product can actually be recycled.
The design was created in the 1980s by a group of chemical companies working with Exxon and BP; Grist recently published a fascinating story about the effort.
Around that time, the plastic industry was contending with the nation’s growing awareness that its products were the root of an intractable pollution problem. States were weighing legislation to deal with it. And the American Plastics Council was convening meetings to head off threats. The council discussed the arrows, which they described as “consumer tested,” according to meeting notes obtained by the Center for Climate Integrity, an advocacy group that works to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable.
The industry persuaded 39 states to require the use of the symbols. Their purpose, the notes said: “to prevent bans.” They pursued the strategy despite warnings from state regulators who predicted the arrows would lead consumers to overestimate the recyclability of plastic packaging.
By 1995, state attorneys general were telling the FTC that’s exactly what was happening.
The agency ruled in 1998 that brands could continue using the codes with the recycling symbol, but could only display them prominently — by printing them next to the brand name, for example — if the product was recyclable for a “substantial majority” of consumers. If not, the symbols could be stamped in a less obvious place, like the bottom of containers.
These mandates did little to ease consumers’ confusion. “You mean we’re not supposed to throw plastic bags in recycling bins?” a colleague recently asked me.
During a tour of the New York facility that sorts the city’s recyclables, I saw the result of a million well-intentioned mistakes — countless bags sloshing over conveyor belts like the unwanted dregs at the bottom of a cereal bowl.
A conveyor belt at the Brooklyn facility that sorts most of the material collected via curbside recycling in New York City (Sharon Lerner/ProPublica)They’re notorious for clogging equipment. Sometimes, they start fires. And when they get stuck between layers of paper, the bags end up contaminating bales of paper that are actually recyclable, condemning much of it to the landfill.
If companies started printing the word “recyclable” on them, I wondered, how much worse could this get?
When you see something labeled as “recyclable,” it’s reasonable to expect it will be made into something new after you toss it in the nearest recycling bin.
You would be wrong.
The current Green Guides allow companies to make blanket “recyclable” claims if 60% of consumers or communities have access to recycling facilities that will take the product. The guides don’t specify whether facilities can just accept the item, or if there needs to be a reasonable assurance that the item will be made into a new product.
When the agency invited the public to comment in late 2022 on how the guides should be revised, FTC Chair Lina M. Khan predicted that one of the main issues would be “whether claims that a product is recyclable should reflect where a product ultimately ends up, not just whether it gets picked up from the curb.”
Strangely, that statement ignored the agency’s own guidance. An FTC supplement to the 2012 Green Guides stated that “recyclable” items must go to facilities “that will actually recycle” them, “not accept and ultimately discard” them.
The industry disagrees with the position.
“Recent case law confirms that the term ‘recyclable’ means ‘capable of being recycled,’ and that it is an attribute, not a guarantee,” said a comment from the Plastics Industry Association. Forcing the material to be “actually recovered” is “unnecessarily burdensome.”
Citing a consumer survey, ExxonMobil told the FTC that the majority of respondents “agreed that it was appropriate to label an item as recyclable if a product can be recycled, even if access to recycling facilities across the country varies.” The company’s comments argued against “arbitrary minimum” thresholds like the 60% rule.
The FTC also received comments urging the agency to tighten the rules. A letter from the attorneys general of 15 states and the District of Columbia suggested increasing the 60% minimum to 90%. And the Environmental Protection Agency told the FTC that “recyclable” is only valid if the facilities that collect those products can reliably make more money by selling them for recycling than by throwing them away in a landfill.
The industry argues that recycling is never guaranteed. Market changes like the pandemic could force facilities to discard material that is technically recyclable, wrote the Consumer Brands Association. There is “simply no consumer deception in a claim that clearly identifies that a product is capable of being recycled,” the group wrote, despite the fact that “an external factor several times removed from the manufacturer results in it ultimately not being recycled.”
And what if consumers stopped seeing as many products marketed as recyclable? That could “dramatically” lower recycling rates, the group wrote, because consumers would get confused, seeming to imply people wouldn’t know if they could recycle anything at all.
“Wow, that’s some weird acrobatics,” Lynn Hoffman, strategic adviser at the Alliance for Mission-Based Recycling, said of the industry’s uncertainty argument. The group is a network of nonprofit recyclers that supports a zero-waste future.
Hoffman acknowledged the inefficiencies in the system. The solution, she said, is to improve the true recyclability of products that can be reliably processed, like soda bottles, by tracking them as they pass through the supply chain, being transparent about where they end up and removing toxic chemicals from products.
Calling everything “recyclable” would be a huge mistake, she said. “We have to be realistic about the role that recycling plays,” she added.
No matter how well done, it doesn’t fix the bigger crisis. Not the microplastics infiltrating our bodies or “plastic smog” in the oceans or poisoned families living in the shadow of the chemical plants that produce it.
In fact, research has shown people can produce more waste when they think it will be recycled. When North Carolina began rolling out curbside recycling in different towns, researchers analyzed data on household waste before and after the change. They found that overall waste — the total amount of trash plus stuff in the recycling bin — rose by up to 10% after recycling became available, possibly because consumers felt less guilty.
“They get their blue bins, and they worry less about the amount of trash they generate,” said one of the researchers, Roland Geyer, a professor of industrial ecology at the University of California-Santa Barbara. “I’m probably guilty of that too.”
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As Millions of Acres Burn, Firefighters Say the U.S. Forest Service Has Left Them With Critical Shortages
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On July 18, federal wildfire managers placed the nation under a designation known as Preparedness Level 5 — bureaucratic code for all hands on deck or, as one veteran wildland firefighter called it, “fire DEFCON.” In layman’s terms, Preparedness Level 5 means that the country’s wildland firefighting resources are spread thin, more blazes are imminent, and supervisors of local crews are reluctant to allow them to travel far from home to help elsewhere. This marks only the fourth time in the past two decades that the country has reached such a state so early in the calendar year. So far, more than 5 million acres have burned nationwide, tripling last year’s total, and there are still months to go in fire season.
Nine days after the country entered Preparedness Level 5, the U.S. Forest Service — the largest of the five federal agencies responsible for fighting wildfires, with more than 11,000 firefighters — said that it had reached 101% of its hiring goal for 2024. However, firefighters on the ground say that the agency is understating how badly depleted their ranks are.
Overall numbers are hard to obtain, but according to data provided by a dispatcher who works for the Bureau of Land Management, 2,417 nationwide requests for crucial fire resources — everything from radio operators to task force leaders — had gone unfilled through July 26. Those requests were delivered to all five federal agencies as well as to state and private organizations. What was especially alarming, the dispatcher said, was the lack of experienced firefighters: “It tells us we have critical shortages in certain particular middle- and upper-level operational qualifications.”
Eric Franta, who works at a Forest Service helicopter air base in Oregon, told me his unit was staffed at only 75%. (In a profession where fears of workplace retaliation are widespread, the only wildland firefighters willing to share their names are those that have roles with the National Federation of Federal Employees, the union representing wildland firefighters. Franta is a union steward.) Another Forest Service wildland firefighter in Oregon said, “We’re not able to fill any crews.” Firefighters in California are reporting similar issues. According to interagency data obtained by ProPublica, 90 of the approximately 270 Forest Service fire engines in the state were unavailable for service on Aug. 12. Engines may be unavailable for a variety of reasons, such as mechanical maintenance or crews on mandatory leave, but firefighters say this number is unusually high. On the same day, according to the data, at least a third of the statewide Hotshot crews — elite teams that fight large wilderness fires — were not staffed sufficiently to operate as intended.
Why the U.S. Is Losing Wildland FirefightersIn March, ProPublica reported that the nation’s wildland firefighting force was experiencing an exodus, especially among its most highly qualified firefighters. In the past three years, the Forest Service lost 45% of its permanent employees, forcing it to fill its ranks with inexperienced firefighters. Those inside and outside the service cite numerous reasons for the departures. Wildland firefighters are compensated poorly; base pay is $15 an hour, roughly what a fast-food server makes. (In 2021, Congress passed a measure that added a temporary retention bonus for firefighters, which is still in effect but has not been made permanent.) The federal civil service structure makes it difficult for wildland firefighters to maintain a career. And the Forest Service especially has been slow to address the health risks involved with suppressing wildland fires. Although the Department of Labor now considers cancer a work-related illness for wildland firefighters, the multiagency preparedness guide for incoming recruits still doesn’t mention the word.
When asked about the disparity between its 101% staffing figure and the dire assessments of firefighters on the ground, a Forest Service spokesperson wrote, “We have some gaps in critical leadership roles due to departure of experienced leaders and managers with years of knowledge and expertise.” The spokesperson added, “If those roles are not able to be filled by qualified and experienced individuals, it can result in operational inefficiencies.”
During one day last week, the federal government reported 123 newly started fires. A number of them were in and around Idaho’s Boise National Forest, where Morgan Thomsen, a union steward and a Forest Service firefighter on a Wyoming helicopter crew, was working. There were not enough firefighters to fill the crews to catch them all, he told me. “The new fires are all big now too, but hardly anyone is on them,” he texted. “The system is being stressed and can’t deal with it. Now, it depends on the weather and site conditions whether these fires will be put out before they burn down houses and so on. We’ve effectively lost our asses and are triaging.”