#RECYCLE IT DON T TRASH IT SERIES#

In response, industry representative Steve Russell, until recently the vice president of plastics for the trade group the American Chemistry Council, said the industry has never intentionally misled the public about recycling and is committed to ensuring all plastic is recycled. 'If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment,' Larry Thomas, former president of the Society of the Plastics Industry, known today as the Plastics Industry Association and one of the industry's most powerful trade groups in Washington, D.C., told NPR. Yet the industry spent millions telling people to recycle, because, as one former top industry insider told NPR, selling recycling sold plastic, even if it wasn't true. 'There is serious doubt that can ever be made viable on an economic basis,' one industry insider wrote in a 1974 speech. The industry's awareness that recycling wouldn't keep plastic out of landfills and the environment dates to the program's earliest days, we found. We found that the industry sold the public on an idea it knew wouldn't work - that the majority of plastic could be, and would be, recycled - all while making billions of dollars selling the world new plastic. NPR and PBS Frontline spent months digging into internal industry documents and interviewing top former officials.

#RECYCLE IT DON T TRASH IT SERIES#

This story is part of a joint investigation with the PBS series Frontline that includes the documentary Plastic Wars, which aired March 31 on PBS. We take the time to clean it, take the labels off, separate it and put it here. 'I remember the first meeting where I actually told a city council that it was costing more to recycle than it was to dispose of the same material as garbage,' she says, 'and it was like heresy had been spoken in the room: You're lying. She sends the soda bottles to the state.īut when Leebrick tried to tell people the truth about burying all the other plastic, she says people didn't want to hear it. She could find only someone who wanted white milk jugs. Rogue, like most recycling companies, had been sending plastic trash to China, but when China shut its doors two years ago, Leebrick scoured the U.S. 'To me that felt like it was a betrayal of the public trust,' she said.

None of this plastic will be turned into new plastic things. Laura Leebrick, a manager at Rogue Disposal & Recycling in southern Oregon, is standing on the end of its landfill watching an avalanche of plastic trash pour out of a semitrailer: containers, bags, packaging, strawberry containers, yogurt cups. Note: An audio version of this story aired on NPR's Planet Money. Landfill workers bury all plastic except soda bottles and milk jugs at Rogue Disposal & Recycling in southern Oregon.

Recycle it don t trash it