Underpinning the plastic waste crisis is a campaign of fraud and deception that fossil fuel and other petrochemical companies have created and perpetuated for decades.
Through new and existing research, âThe Fraud of Plastic Recyclingâ shows how Big Oil and the plastics industry have deceptively promoted recycling as a solution to plastic waste management for more than 50 years, despite their long-standing knowledge that plastic recycling is not technically or economically viable at scale.
Now itâs time for accountability.
Pollution
The Fraud of Plastic Recycling
for Centre For Climate IntegrityREDcycleâs collapse and the hard truths on recycling soft plastics in Australia
in The GuardianFormed in 2011, REDcycle was a national soft plastics collection and recycling program. It operated across 2,000 Coles and Woolworths supermarkets and some Aldi stores, with customers able to drop off used soft plastics for processing.
Before its collapse in November 2022, the program claimed to collect 5m items a day. Prior to 2018, most of those were sent to China. After that, some were mechanically recycled into road surfacing, bollards, benches and paths in Australia. But a mid-2022 fire at Close the Loopâs Melbourne plant â where soft plastics were turned into an asphalt additive â took away a key recycling pathway. The fire was largely blamed for REDcycleâs suspension along with a âdownturn in market demandâ exacerbated by the Covid pandemic.
Coles and Woolworths said in April 2023 that REDcycle had been stockpiling soft plastics without their knowledge while the scheme itself claimed it had been holding on to the waste while trying to ride out problems.
The discovery of 11,000 tonnes of stockpiled soft plastic at 44 storage locations across the country led to the establishment of the Soft Plastics Taskforce under the aegis of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and chaired by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. Its members â Coles, Woolworths and Aldi â were tasked with ensuring the rubbish would not reach landfill.
In March 2023, the taskforce released a plan titled the roadmap to restart, which detailed a phased restart of soft plastic collections in stores from the end of the year. That deadline was not met. The taskforce has, however, âconsolidated and safeguardedâ REDcycleâs stockpiles and will run a small-scale soft plastics trial collection in the coming months. Just 120 tonnes have been recycled.
Collision Course
in PoliticoOn its surface, Khanâs clean air zone is hardly the stuff of revolution. Called the London Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ), it imposed a daily charge of ÂŁ12.50 (about $15) on highly polluting vehicles traversing the central parts of the capital and enforced the sanctions with roadside cameras. Yet its expansion in late August has distorted U.K. national politics and Khanâs political prospects, and would even come to pose a threat to his personal safety.
The new pollution charge has been met with a seething public backlash â one I would later encounter firsthand in a village on Londonâs furthest reaches.
According to a person close to the mayor â who, like others in this article, was granted anonymity to discuss sensitive matters â anti-ULEZ protesters have regularly turned up at Khanâs South London home, including when his two daughters were there alone. For several days, a caravan was chained outside his house bearing slogans and artwork that included swastikas. Protesters targeted his family for abuse at public events.
A town hall meeting in early November had to be moved to City Hall for security reasons. During the meeting, a man yelled that, centuries ago, Khan would have been hung from the âgallows.â Police have regularly searched the mayorâs house and car in response to written notes claiming explosive devices had been planted. In October, a letter came in the mail, addressed to him, with a bullet inside.
People are refusing to pay their wastewater bills in response to water companyâs âdirtyâ practices
in The CanaryA new campaign calling for ten thousand people to stop paying their wastewater bills, to force companies to end the practice of pouring 11bn litres of raw sewage every year into UK rivers and seas, was launched on 15 November by Extinction Rebellion and local water action groups.
The Donât Pay for Dirty Water campaign, which targets all of the major water companies, kicked off with a splash, with campaigners swimming beneath the sewage outflow into the River Roding in East London.
The organisers vow to sign up at least ten thousand people to withhold the wastewater or sewerage part of their water bill. By collectively withholding millions of pounds, the boycotters hope to pressure water companies and the government to fast-track infrastructure upgrades and stop diverting ordinary billpayersâ money into massive profits for shareholders while billpayersâ local waterways are poisoned.