Bottled water monopolist admits recycling is bullshit

“Personal responsibility” and “caveat emptor.”

CORRECTION: The original version of this article identified Exxon as the creator of the recycling symbol,They did not create the symbol, but they did pressure 40 US state legislatures to mandate the use of the logo, though they knew that the plastics that bore it couldn’t be recycled.

“Puffery” is a funny word! It’s the word that lawyers use when their clients are accused of unlawful speech acts, such as fraud or libel. In that context, “puffery” (or, even better, “mere puffery”) is a synonym for bullshit.

Recycling is puffery. Which is to say, recyling is bullshit.

Plastics recycling has its origins in a “puffery” campaign. In 1973, Exxon researchers told the company that there was no feasible way to recycle plastics, and that there likely never would be.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/14/they-knew/#doing-it-again

Exxon sprang into action! They created a puffery campaign! They lobbied state legislatures to mandate the use of the recycling logo, three arrows pointing at each other, telling us that plastic was part of a new, “circular” economy. Oil is made into plastic, plastic is used, plastic is recycled. Everybody wins!

We — the “consumers” (ugh) — bought it. We bought the plastic, sure, but we bought the puffery, too. We sorted our plastic, washed it, set it out on the curb. 90% of it was never recycled. 90% of it never will be.

I remember when recycling came to Ontario. Prior to our curbside blue-boxes, we had refillable bottles: standard beer and soda bottles that you redeemed for a deposit so they could be returned to a depot, washed, and sent out to bottlers. This meant that it was harder for the likes of Coke to brand their bottles — but it also meant we didn’t fill our oceans, landfills, and blood and tissues with immortal petroleum contaminants.

Maintaining the recycling puffery took work, because reality has a completely unfair anti-plastic bias. Every couple of years, we’d learn something else about how horrible, harmful, and catastrophic plastics were, and the industry would spring into action with innovative new puffery.