Plastic Wars (full documentary) — FRONTLINE

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: The world is flooded with plastic garbage. [00:00:04] Speaker 2: In this state, none of this is recyclable. [00:00:06] Speaker 3: Have efforts to solve the plastics problem made it worse? [00:00:10] Speaker 4: Do you think the industry used recycling to sell more plastic? [00:00:14] Speaker 3: Absolutely. Frontline and NPR investigate the battle over plastics. [00:00:18] Speaker 5: We have to manage the waste, right? We have to fix this. And what's at stake? [00:00:23] Speaker 1: For the oil and gas industry, plastic is their lifeline. This is the big war. [00:00:28] Speaker 3: Now, plastic wars. [00:00:37] Speaker 4: In 2015, a marine biologist came across a sea turtle in distress. [00:00:45] Speaker 6: I don't want to put it too much. [00:00:47] Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, it's bleeding already. Oh, poor baby. I'm sorry. Christ, that is plastical. [00:00:56] Speaker 8: Oh, man. Don't tell me it's a freaking... It's just freaking... [00:01:02] Speaker 9: Oh, man. [00:01:03] Speaker 4: Her video of the encounter quickly went viral. [00:01:05] Speaker 9: This poor sea turtle... [00:01:07] Speaker 4: It would attract more than 35 million views... ...a rallying cry for action. ...and focus public attention on a growing problem. [00:01:14] Speaker 10: That turtle video certainly did have an impact. Plastic pollution, a planetary crisis. [00:01:19] Speaker 4: Plastics in the ocean have been building up for decades. [00:01:22] Speaker 11: In an underwater paradise, a plastic nightmare. [00:01:27] Speaker 4: Recurring images of dead whales. 80 plastic bags found inside the whale. Loaded seabirds. Oh. And littered waterways have fueled a global anti-plastic movement. Enemy number one, the plastic straw. [00:01:40] Speaker 12: Many U.S. cities are taking steps to ban plastic grocery bags. [00:01:45] Speaker 4: Save our Earth before it's too late! And yet, despite the backlash... ...the industry that makes plastic is expanding. [00:01:53] Speaker 3: The start of construction on that multi-billion dollar plastics plant. [00:01:57] Speaker 4: Plentiful supplies of natural gas are driving down the cost of making plastic. The U.S. is now one of the world's largest plastic producers. [00:02:06] Speaker 12: It's going to be the largest plant of its kind in the world. [00:02:10] Speaker 4: And industry is investing tens of billions of dollars in new plastic plants. Construction will eventually employ 6,000 people. By 2050, it's estimated that global production of plastic will triple. [00:02:22] Speaker 13: A plastic boom. There's going to be more plastic than ever. [00:02:25] Speaker 4: I wanted to understand how we came to this moment. How the plastic industry has been able to thrive all these years in the face of a growing crisis. An opposition that's now stronger than it's ever been. For decades, the national response to the growing plastic waste problem has focused on one solution: recycling. And few places have pursued recycling more aggressively than Oregon. What we put in our recycling bins ends up in sorting plants. Like this one outside of Portland. [00:03:20] Speaker 14: We're actually very full right now. This is all coming in fresh. [00:03:24] Speaker 8: This is all fresh. First unload, right? [00:03:26] Speaker 14: That's what it looks like when it comes in. [00:03:29] Speaker 4: Vinod Singh is the outreach manager at Far West Recycling. Every single piece of this has to be sorted in some way. [00:03:38] Speaker 15: We have to separate paper, and then the metals, and then the plastics. [00:03:42] Speaker 4: There are a lot of different kinds of plastics that have to be sorted. [00:03:48] Speaker 15: What we're doing here is we're sorting it out into the milk jug, the natural HDPE, the pigmented HDPE, PET water bottles. [00:03:59] Speaker 16: They're looking for plastic. Yeah. [00:04:01] Speaker 15: So all the plastic will come off before the line ends. [00:04:05] Speaker 4: Some items, like soda bottles and milk jugs, are easier to recycle. So there's money to be made. [00:04:12] Speaker 14: So this is all plastic that has a home. [00:04:15] Speaker 4: But most other types of plastic are technically difficult and often costly to recycle. And that makes them nearly impossible to sell. So they keep piling up. [00:04:25] Speaker 17: This is plastic that has no home. [00:04:27] Speaker 14: This is plastic that has no home. So it's your clamshells, Ziploc bags, film, CD, a food, like a food wrapper. [00:04:37] Speaker 4: In the business, they're called mixed plastics. [00:04:40] Speaker 14: Now you're getting more mixed plastics, like pouches and everything. And everything comes in a clamshell now. [00:04:47] Speaker 16: So if somebody throws their Tide bottle into their bin, that's a win. Yeah. But what you're saying is you're seeing more and more of this stuff. [00:04:55] Speaker 14: Packaging is evolving. [00:04:57] Speaker 4: Most mixed plastics end up in a place like this. [00:05:00] Speaker 18: What you're seeing happening right now is that's a full size, that's probably a 53-foot trailer. [00:05:06] Speaker 4: In Medford, Oregon, Rogue Disposal's landfill takes about 100 loads of trash a day. And more and more of it is plastic. [00:05:15] Speaker 19: The plastic films, plastic bags, the plastic wrapping that comes around a lot of packaged goods, that all goes into the garbage. It's margarine tubs, clamshells, and deli containers. Until there is a viable option for recycling those things, we should be putting it in a landfill. [00:05:34] Speaker 4: But that's not what we've been told for decades, as the things we buy have been increasingly packaged in plastic. Are you David? I'm Laura Sullivan. [00:05:45] Speaker 16: Very nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, too. Very nice to meet you. Welcome to Portland. [00:05:49] Speaker 4: David Alloway is a senior policy analyst with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. [00:05:55] Speaker 8: So much of all this stuff in the grocery store is plastic now. [00:05:59] Speaker 2: It's really inexpensive. [00:06:01] Speaker 4: It's an easy way to package it. [00:06:04] Speaker 2: It is, and it performs -- it performs very well. It has really good engineering qualities. It protects food very well. [00:06:12] Speaker 4: This is my basic question because it seems like everybody's buying lettuce in a box now. Is this recyclable? [00:06:19] Speaker 2: In this state, none of this is recyclable. [00:06:22] Speaker 8: Okay, what about all these? This is everywhere in every supermarket. [00:06:25] Speaker 2: In Oregon, again, there are no curbside programs that would accept any of these tubs. [00:06:30] Speaker 4: Okay, so this is classic when a lot of Americans do this. Look what you're doing right now. We flip it over. Yep, that's right. What are we looking at? [00:06:37] Speaker 2: At the bottom of all these plastic containers is this little chasing arrow. The little recycling symbol with a number. And the number, there's some words. It says 1-P-E-T-E. This package here is technically recyclable. You could recycle this in a lab. Okay. But it's not economical to recycle it given the current economics of recycling. [00:07:00] Speaker 4: But if it's not happening in Oregon, it makes me wonder what's going on in the rest of the country. [00:07:06] Speaker 2: I would say that this package is rarely recycled in most parts in the country. Yeah. Can I give you another example here? Yes, please. So let's take a look at these blueberries. Okay. This is classic. And if you turn this over, you see the chasing arrows. On the bottom, it says 100 percent recyclable. There is no program in Oregon that wants this in the curbside mix. But more than half of all people that live in the Portland area believe this belongs in the curbside container. Well, it says it's recyclable. [00:07:35] Speaker 16: It says it's recyclable. [00:07:36] Speaker 2: It has the recycling logo. It's very confusing to a lot of people. [00:07:41] Speaker 4: This confusion about what can and can't be recycled and where plastic ultimately ends up is no accident. Over the past year, we've been investigating the plastic crisis and found that many of the problems we face today were set in motion decades ago by the very companies who make plastic in the first place. One of those companies is DuPont. And on the grounds of the first DuPont family home, I found the Hagley Library. It holds one of the world's largest collections of industrial history. [00:08:23] Speaker 20: This is an American city, a real community of homes and homemakers like thousands of others across the nation. We call it Plasticstown, USA. [00:08:32] Speaker 4: I'd come to see what its archive could tell me about the evolution of the plastic problem. [00:08:38] Speaker 20: The table is set with polyethylene products, too. [00:08:40] Speaker 4: America's post-war boom presented endless opportunities for this new, durable, lightweight material. [00:08:47] Speaker 21: Modern day miracles that were made with the help of petrochemicals. [00:08:54] Speaker 4: From packaging, to clothing, to home furnishings. [00:08:58] Speaker 22: Very durable. [00:08:59] Speaker 4: Plastic's wide-ranging applications. [00:09:02] Speaker 22: Glass seam, polyethylene. [00:09:03] Speaker 4: Promised a new world through chemistry. [00:09:06] Speaker 21: Step into the world of man-made materials that take up where nature left off. [00:09:11] Speaker 23: The thing that made them unique was the ability to do more with just a little bit of material. To make things that we use lighter and more efficient. So, plastic came to be used in many applications because it performed better. [00:09:26] Speaker 22: That was not a trick. [00:09:27] Speaker 23: It did a good job of doing what it was asked to do. It made life more efficient and easier. [00:09:32] Speaker 4: But by 1970, the plastic industry would have to confront the turbulent times of America's environmental awakening. [00:09:41] Speaker 1: One in every ten Americans took part in rallies. [00:09:44] Speaker 4: Earth Day was one of the largest mass protests in U.S. history. [00:09:49] Speaker 1: Earth Day was profound in terms of people waking up to the fact that we live on a finite planet. And there was a lot of concern about the trend that was happening towards a more throwaway disposable lifestyle. [00:10:01] Speaker 4: In response, many companies, including plastic makers and even some environmentalists, got behind an iconic ad campaign that focused attention on the public's role. [00:10:14] Speaker 1: And I remember being a kid and watching those ads. The most famous one with the crying Indian... [00:10:21] Speaker 7: Some people have a deep abiding respect for the natural beauty that was once this country. [00:10:27] Speaker 1: He was actually Italian dressed up like an Indian. But the fake crying Indian, the most famous one, ends with this very dramatic sentence where they say... [00:10:36] Speaker 7: People start pollution. People can stop it. [00:10:42] Speaker 1: People all around the country bought that line and thought it was our responsibility to take care of litter. [00:10:48] Speaker 21: Americans discard more trash than any other country in the world. [00:10:52] Speaker 4: While the efforts to change consumer behavior help clean up the more visible litter problem, they did little to address the root cause. [00:11:00] Speaker 24: What makes our lives convenient is burying us. [00:11:04] Speaker 4: The unchecked growth in household waste. A barge filled with garbage is causing quite an international stink. [00:11:10] Speaker 20: Loaded with more than 3,000 tons of waste. [00:11:13] Speaker 4: By 1987, a wandering barge called the Mobro became an emblem of the growing crisis. [00:11:20] Speaker 1: Greenpeace went and climbed aboard it and took a huge banner that we put on it. We said, "Next time, try recycling." It really became a metaphor of we are bumping up against limits here. We cannot keep just continuing this mindless consumerism, mindless consumption, and dump it somewhere else. [00:11:39] Speaker 24: America has a garbage problem too long ignored. [00:11:42] Speaker 4: At Hagley, we found a collection of internal plastic industry documents about this period of time, when the industry was in the crosshairs of the environmental movement and plastics were under attack. As we continued reporting, we found even more internal documents and court filings and spoke with over a dozen industry insiders, including three top executives who represented the big plastic producers and agreed to talk publicly for the first time. Back then, one of the vice presidents at the Society of the Plastics Industry was Lou Freeman. He now heads a local environmental coalition, but he remembers a pivotal board meeting in the late '80s when the industry was worried about its public image. [00:12:28] Speaker 25: The vice president of the DuPont Company pulled me aside and said, "You guys better get up to Wilmington. There's dissatisfaction about what's going on with this solid waste issue." We took a trek up to Wilmington, and this one DuPont executive, he said, "I think if we had $5 million," which seemed like a lot of money then. [00:12:48] Speaker 4: $5 million. [00:12:49] Speaker 25: If we had $5 million, we could solve this problem. [00:12:53] Speaker 4: They created the Council for Solid Waste Solutions, drawn from their ranks of big oil and petrochemical companies that made plastic, like Amoco, Chevron, Dow, and Exxon. The group had a plan and turned to a veteran of the industry, Ron Leesmer, to execute it. [00:13:10] Speaker 26: They wanted to know, "Was I interested in being the guy who actually made recycling happen across the U.S.?" [00:13:17] Speaker 4: I mean, you got handed this task to recycle plastic in the United States. In the United States. [00:13:23] Speaker 26: Literally, me. I had no staff. But I had millions of dollars to do what I felt was necessary. [00:13:29] Speaker 20: In a highly controversial election, one county in New York State has voted to ban all packaging made of two kinds of plastic. [00:13:36] Speaker 4: It was a critical moment. A growing backlash was threatening the future of plastic. [00:13:41] Speaker 22: In what may be part of a national trend, the City Council of St. Paul, Minnesota, voted to outlaw the use of polystyrene plastics. [00:13:50] Speaker 4: Leesmer was sent to Minnesota on an urgent mission. Brand-name companies that used plastic were facing bans on their products. [00:13:58] Speaker 26: There was an attitude that if your product was not recycled, then it should not be in the marketplace. So it was up to us in the plastics industry to solve this problem so that they could continue to package their products in plastic. [00:14:15] Speaker 4: And Leesmer found a solution. To appease government officials, the industry funded a local recycling pilot project. [00:14:22] Speaker 26: The industry attitude was, "We'll set this up and get it going. But if the public wants it, they are going to have to pay for it." [00:14:33] Speaker 4: The plastic bans were averted. Do you think that they took a lesson away from how to fight the bans? [00:14:41] Speaker 26: Oh, yes. It was, we need to be doing things. Like what? Don't wait until legislation appears. [00:14:48] Speaker 4: You're saying preempt it? [00:14:50] Speaker 26: Yes. Do it first. [00:14:52] Speaker 4: And we did. Did you feel like they cared more about selling plastic than they did about making recycling work? [00:15:00] Speaker 26: Making recycling work was a way to keep their products in the marketplace. [00:15:06] Speaker 4: It was a way to sell plastic. [00:15:08] Speaker 26: Yes. It's a win-win situation. You get recycling going, that has its benefits, and it improves the image of the material. [00:15:19] Speaker 4: The industry found another way to promote plastic, using recycling. Responding to pressure from states and environmentalists to better identify the many types of plastic, it created a code to tell them apart. That code was a numbering system put inside the well-known symbol for recycling, the chasing arrows. The problem, recyclers said, is that it left the impression that all those kinds of plastics were actually being recycled. Coy Smith ran recycling centers in Southern California in the 1980s and early 90s. All right, there you are. [00:15:54] Speaker 11: During that time, the plastics industry, they went around to states, and they convinced those states to pass laws. And they did this very quietly. They passed laws that required that symbol, with the number on it, be put on plastic containers sold in that state. I mean, for most states they did it in, recyclers didn't even know it happened. And the next thing you know, all the plastic containers have these symbols on them. [00:16:20] Speaker 4: Is this a good thing or a bad thing? [00:16:21] Speaker 11: It's a bad thing. [00:16:22] Speaker 4: Why? [00:16:23] Speaker 11: Because the average person saw the symbol, they know the symbol, and said, well, it's recyclable, right? Got three arrows. I'm like, well, all of a sudden, our own customers, they would bring it in and not only say it has the triangle, but they would flat out say, it says it's recyclable right on it. And I'd be like, I can tell you, I can't give this away. There's no one that would even take it if I paid them to take it. That's how unrecyclable it was. [00:16:50] Speaker 4: Stuck with plastics they couldn't sell, Smith and other recyclers met with representatives from the plastic industry. Do you see the one? Yeah, there's my name right there. And came up with a report identifying key problems with the numbering code. [00:17:03] Speaker 11: Some firms are using it as a green marketing tool. The code is being misused. [00:17:08] Speaker 4: The plastic industry that you were working with agreed to these and signed on to this report. [00:17:14] Speaker 11: They did. [00:17:15] Speaker 4: So they knew that these problems existed. [00:17:17] Speaker 11: They knew these problems existed, absolutely. [00:17:19] Speaker 4: Recyclers and the plastic makers couldn't agree on how to change the code. Industry would only switch to a triangle, which recyclers said was too similar to the chasing arrows. Industry wouldn't even consider, say, no triangle or a circle. No. [00:17:35] Speaker 11: They didn't want to go anywhere near no triangle. We said go to a square, go to some other symbol, just not the triangle. And they said no. Coming up with ways to have their product perceived as more recyclable and more environmental makes their product look better. They want to sell more plastic containers. [00:17:54] Speaker 4: Recyclers also appealed to government regulators, but they sided with industry. They said that the chasing arrows symbol was okay, as long as it was small and on the bottom of packaging. What if it's got a chasing arrow sign on it and you think that means it's getting recycled? [00:18:10] Speaker 26: That was one of the comments early that it implied that those products were being recycled. That wasn't the intent. [00:18:19] Speaker 4: Were they misleading the public? [00:18:23] Speaker 26: I don't think so, because when I looked at them, at the arrows, I thought, this is a way to identify the products so that recycling, the early stages of recycling can take place. [00:18:37] Speaker 4: But even as Leesmer and his colleagues were publicly promoting recycling, privately, the industry had long expressed doubt it was ever going to happen on a broad scale. One internal document from the Society of the Plastics Industry cautioned, "The techniques of cleaning and separating the mixed plastics has not been developed for large-scale economic application." Another said, "There are no effective market mechanisms for mixed plastic." And this document was candid. There is serious doubt widespread plastic recycling can ever be made viable on an economic basis. How could they go into all of these communities and tell people, you just have to recycle, when they knew there were so many problems and so many hurdles? [00:19:24] Speaker 25: Some were very skeptical, but felt they had to do it. I think others were more hopeful. There was never an enthusiastic belief that recycling was ultimately going to work in a significant way. [00:19:43] Speaker 4: Freeman's boss at the time, Larry Thomas, the head of the Society of the Plastics Industry, was blunt about it. [00:19:50] Speaker 27: I was a front man for the plastics industry, no getting around it. [00:19:55] Speaker 4: Thomas wouldn't sit down for an on-camera interview, but agreed to talk on the phone. [00:19:59] Speaker 27: If the public thinks the recycling is working, then they're not going to be as concerned about the environment. I think they knew that the infrastructure wasn't there to really have recycling amount to a whole lot. [00:20:16] Speaker 4: Thomas wrote a confidential memo in 1989 about the precarious position the industry was in. The image of plastics among consumers is deteriorating at an alarmingly fast pace, it says. We're approaching a point of no return. Business is being lost. Analysts are beginning to take notice. We must immediately undertake a major program of unprecedented proportions to reverse this fast-moving tidal wave of growing negative public perception. So the big plastic producers came up with a multi-million dollar solution. [00:20:54] Speaker 1: When you look at plastic, you know how it helps things stay fresh and safe and light. [00:20:59] Speaker 25: It spent most of its money, millions and millions of dollars on advertising. [00:21:03] Speaker 28: Plastic also saves energy. [00:21:05] Speaker 25: To tout the virtues of plastics as a way of heading off the criticism the industry was experiencing. [00:21:12] Speaker 26: When we started that advertising program, I think the image of plastics was in the mid-30s. You know, 30-35% favorability. That's pretty low. If you're in politics, you're in deep trouble with a 35% rating. [00:21:29] Speaker 29: Presenting the possibilities of plastics. [00:21:32] Speaker 25: When they were running advertising on television, they were not about how plastics can be recycled, but all the wonderful things that plastics bring to us. [00:21:40] Speaker 28: Plastics make it possible. [00:21:43] Speaker 25: The fact that you now don't have to worry about dropping a shampoo bottle that was made out of glass on the bathroom floor because it's plastic, and there's nothing wrong in an industry promoting those kinds of things, but that's not addressing the problem that people are criticizing you about. [00:21:57] Speaker 4: And it worked? [00:21:58] Speaker 25: And it worked. [00:21:59] Speaker 4: Hmm. Because you went from 30% favorability. [00:22:02] Speaker 26: From, let's say, mid-30s to mid-60s. Favorability. [00:22:05] Speaker 4: Mm-hmm. [00:22:06] Speaker 14: Glass? That's the past. Thermoset is the future. [00:22:13] Speaker 4: Over the next several decades... [00:22:15] Speaker 14: What once was glass will soon be plastic. [00:22:17] Speaker 4: Plastic became the unrivaled material of choice for consumers. [00:22:21] Speaker 30: Busy lifestyles and a growing urban population mean an increase in demand for food that is... Plastic sales exploded. Convenient... [00:22:29] Speaker 4: From 1990 to 2010, production more than doubled. And fast. [00:22:33] Speaker 30: Flexible packaging has become part of our daily lives. [00:22:38] Speaker 4: And with all that new plastic, came mountains of plastic waste. [00:22:45] Speaker 29: Here we are at our GDB South Brunswick facility. [00:22:50] Speaker 4: South, okay. In New Jersey, I met a man who built a $180 million recycling business off of that waste. [00:22:56] Speaker 29: Use and discard. And then this is where it all ends up. [00:23:00] Speaker 4: Sunil Bagaria is national chairman of the plastics division for ISRI, the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries. His company buys throw-away plastic from some of the largest big-box stores in the U.S. [00:23:13] Speaker 16: Oh my God, what is this? [00:23:14] Speaker 29: This is just hangers, one type of plastic. [00:23:17] Speaker 16: Why are these all here? [00:23:19] Speaker 29: Well, you would imagine that when you, you know, you take a garment off the rack and take it to the checkout counter. Yes. Then this should go back. [00:23:30] Speaker 8: That they would just reuse it? Yeah. [00:23:32] Speaker 29: But they said, you know what? We'll just buy new hangers. In the meantime, let me just recycle this. [00:23:38] Speaker 8: Oh boy. This hanger gets used one time. One time. [00:23:43] Speaker 4: Starting in the late '90s, Bagaria and other recycling brokers had a one-word answer to the growing plastic waste problem: China. [00:23:52] Speaker 29: I mean, China did a big one for the recycling industry, I must say. Yeah. Because as long as it remotely resembled plastic, they wanted it. They would take it. Yeah. Polystyrene, PET, PVC, polypropylene. Because that's how big a demand of manufacturing was there in China. They wanted raw material. Give me raw material. Right. That's all they wanted. [00:24:17] Speaker 10: How long did that go on for? [00:24:18] Speaker 29: Almost 20 years. But later, we surely realized that there was always another aspect of what was going on in China. Which was what? They would just take, like, the low-hanging fruits. The good stuff. Good stuff. Easy to do. Yeah. The remaining plastic waste will then be disposed of. [00:24:41] Speaker 4: Eventually, the reality of what was happening in China became clear. [00:24:46] Speaker 19: These Chinese children spend most of their waking hours between plumes of smoke and mountains of plastic. [00:24:52] Speaker 4: And in 2018, China stopped taking imported plastic waste. [00:24:57] Speaker 12: Now the country is trying to clean up its image. [00:25:00] Speaker 29: Because we thought that it was getting recycled, gave us the freedom. Okay. No problem. Let me continue to use it. It is ultimately getting recycled. What is the problem? We never asked the question, are they doing it the right way? Are we damaging the environment more in the name of recycling? [00:25:25] Speaker 4: When the recycling market in China went away, when it came out of necessity, Begaria and other brokers scrambled to find a new home for their plastic. And countries like Indonesia saw a business opportunity. Last fall, I met up with Begaria there. He was checking out a recycling company that he sells his plastic to. [00:25:44] Speaker 16: This is his factory? This is your factory. Yeah. [00:25:47] Speaker 4: Begaria had come to make sure his plastic was actually being recycled. And turned into tiny pellets that are used to make new plastic products. Hot pellets. [00:25:57] Speaker 29: This is your pellets. Ah, there they are. This is the holding tank. [00:26:00] Speaker 16: Hot pellets. How much responsibility do you feel like you have over what's happening here? [00:26:06] Speaker 29: Oh, we are the shipper of the scrap. It all originates with us. We could ship scrap and hope that it is being recycled in the way it should be. Yeah. Or the other way is come here, see how serious he is about doing it the right way. [00:26:22] Speaker 4: But there are growing concerns here that a lot of plastic waste is not being handled the right way. And Indonesian officials are trying to prevent what happened in China from happening here. [00:26:37] Speaker 31: Is this one of the big priorities here? [00:26:47] Speaker 4: So contaminated plastic trash is as big a problem for you guys as narcotics and drugs coming into the country? Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Last year, customs found that half the containers of plastic waste they inspected were contaminated with trash and plastic that can't be recycled. We wanted to see for ourselves what was happening to the plastic coming here. [00:27:16] Speaker 8: Right there? [00:27:17] Speaker 17: Yeah. That opening? [00:27:19] Speaker 4: One recycling company here caught our attention. Yeah. [00:27:22] Speaker 17: PT New Harvest Indo International. [00:27:24] Speaker 4: Based on Indonesian customs documents we'd obtained. [00:27:27] Speaker 17: 191 containers being held right now. Let's just go knock and see if maybe someone will talk to us. [00:27:35] Speaker 4: With the help of an Indonesian journalist, we tried to speak to someone at New Harvest Indo. But we were told there was no one available. [00:27:42] Speaker 28: We need to confirm. We just need to confirm if the data that we have is correct or not. Can we come in and look? Looks like a lot of shipping containers. Yeah. I think we're in the right place. [00:27:54] Speaker 8: Yeah. [00:27:55] Speaker 4: The customs document we had said the company was getting plastic from the US. With no one from New Harvest Indo willing to speak to us, we still wanted to know what they were doing with all those bales of plastic waste. And whether it was all being recycled. We'd heard about an environmental activist who's been tracking what happens to the plastic coming into Indonesia. [00:28:31] Speaker 17: Hi. [00:28:32] Speaker 4: I met up with Yuyun Ismawadi in a small rural community nearby. [00:28:37] Speaker 32: This place, it's huge. Yeah. It's huge and very wide. You can see it from that corner to the end of that valley over there. [00:28:47] Speaker 17: What's it like to look at a field this size and see it covered in plastic trash? I can show you the pictures. Oh, really? You took pictures? Yes. Yeah. I'd love to see that. [00:28:58] Speaker 4: Yeah. We took a seat by the side of the road. And she showed me pictures she'd collected of plastic that locals said had been dumped here. [00:29:07] Speaker 32: The sacks are from a plastic company. When I came here in June, I asked them where did they get this from? And then they said it's from Harvest they call it. Harvest. [00:29:20] Speaker 4: Waste pickers would look for plastics of value and the rest would be burned. [00:29:25] Speaker 32: So this is how it looks like when they burn it. [00:29:28] Speaker 4: So it's like a big, sort of a big fire on this pit. Yeah. [00:29:32] Speaker 32: Yeah. People with respiratory problem, they really got affected and some children got hospitalized. [00:29:42] Speaker 4: After the community complained to the government about the burning, the dumping stopped here. I mean, how big a problem do you think these kinds of dumping grounds are in Indonesia? [00:29:54] Speaker 32: How big? They are everywhere around this area. Yeah, the recycling system that we have at the moment is not really recycling because some part of it exported, being exported all over the world to be recycled. Yeah. But you never know whether it's really recycled, being recycled overseas or not. There is no proof. [00:30:17] Speaker 4: We reached out to the two recycling companies known locally as Harvest. New Harvest Indo still wouldn't respond to us. And the other company denied it was behind the dumping. But later that night, on a back street, I met up with a New Harvest Indo worker who agreed to talk to me about what the company does with its plastic waste. [00:30:36] Speaker 17: Hi. [00:30:37] Speaker 4: Hi. [00:30:38] Speaker 17: Thank you so much for coming to meet me. [00:30:40] Speaker 4: As long as we didn't disclose his identity. When you get a bail of plastic, how much of that bail is plastic that the company wants? And how much of it is stuff that is just plastic that you're not going to do anything with? [00:30:53] Speaker 33: What do you do with the rest of it? How long has that been going on for? He told me he could take me to a place where the company had recently been dumping plastic. [00:31:23] Speaker 4: After a 30-minute drive, we reached a quiet neighborhood with an area hidden from the road. The smell of burnt plastic was in the air. And all around, there were sacks of plastic. And big piles too. [00:31:44] Speaker 8: This is from Purchase, New York. Yeah, this is totally American. This is from California. This is a pile of U.S. recycling. [00:31:58] Speaker 4: New Harvest Indo eventually got back to us. And denied it was responsible for doing anything that damaged the environment. It sent in an email that it had a comprehensive system to handle plastic waste. And it follows all Indonesian laws and regulations. The company has not been charged with any wrongdoing related to dumping. [00:32:23] Speaker 32: In the last 20 years, we've seen more environmental degradation and environmental problems in Indonesia. Because we are struggling to clean up the marine debris and marine litter in Indonesia. The additional burden of waste from overseas, I don't know how we are going to handle it. [00:32:44] Speaker 4: You're saying you've got plenty as it is? [00:32:46] Speaker 32: Yes, because we are struggling to handle our own waste. [00:32:51] Speaker 4: A lot of that waste is ending up in the ocean. One study estimates that 60% of ocean plastic comes from Asia. What do you think Americans need to know? [00:33:04] Speaker 32: Americans need to know that your waste ended up here. And the consumption and lifestyle that you have, I think you have to rethink. Because we have to reduce the amount of plastics that we produce at the moment. [00:33:28] Speaker 4: That message is reinvigorating a backlash against plastic. The likes of which the industry hasn't seen for decades. [00:33:35] Speaker ?: No good. I can talk loud. [00:33:37] Speaker 4: It's facing opposition to the construction of new plants. [00:33:40] Speaker 30: I said, "Everybody up here so they don't want the plant, there shouldn't be any more talk about it." As of today, plastic bags are banned in Jersey City. [00:33:48] Speaker 4: And plastic bans are spreading across the country. This is our moment, California. Let's get these bills passed. Let's do right by our future. A major showdown is shaping up in California. The legislature wants to impose new fees on plastic makers and restrict single-use plastics. [00:34:04] Speaker 12: This is a big moment. This is a big moment. Yeah. So if the California market changes, we know it's going to put pressure on the kind of products that are out there. [00:34:13] Speaker 4: Amid the backlash, I headed to the Texas Gulf Coast, where oil and gas companies are under pressure from climate change and increasingly turning to plastics. Now their biggest growth market. We reached out to more than a dozen major plastic makers. The only one that would sit down with us was Chevron Phillips. Jim Becker is the vice president of sustainability. We're seeing California, the legislation, some bans across the country, and a lot of targets on single-use plastic. [00:34:48] Speaker 5: Our view is you have to be very careful with that because sometimes the substitute products can have a bigger environmental impact than the thing you are banning. [00:34:59] Speaker ?: Right. [00:35:00] Speaker 5: So we don't think banning these products is necessarily the right way to go. [00:35:05] Speaker 4: What does Chevron Phillips want to see happen? [00:35:07] Speaker 5: We support actually the ACC goals, American Chemistry Council. [00:35:13] Speaker ?: Yeah. [00:35:14] Speaker 5: Goals of getting plastic waste out of landfills by, I think the date is 2040. [00:35:21] Speaker 4: Chevron Phillips would like to see all of that plastic recycled back to make new plastic things. [00:35:31] Speaker 5: Yeah. [00:35:32] Speaker 4: How do you get it to a place where 100% of this plastic getting recycled? [00:35:37] Speaker ?: Yeah. [00:35:37] Speaker 4: How do you get there? [00:35:39] Speaker 5: Much more education needs to happen on how to recycle. You also have to really build up the infrastructure for collection. We're going to have to invest in innovation because some of these technologies still need to be further developed. [00:35:55] Speaker 4: If the oil industry is able to get 100% of the material recycled, doesn't that affect the bottom line? [00:36:05] Speaker 5: Yes, it would. It would. But the alternative is having plastic waste in the environment. We don't want that. [00:36:11] Speaker 4: I think that the company feels so strongly that it is willing to make less money. [00:36:17] Speaker 5: I think that's true. I guess I think of it more as an investment in managing plastic waste. [00:36:25] Speaker 4: Once again, the industry is pushing recycling. Today, its main lobbying group is the American Chemistry Council. And until recently, its vice president of plastics was Steve Russell. You fundamentally think that in the United States, recycling could ramp up to a capacity to handle the vast majority of plastic that's being produced. [00:36:47] Speaker 23: I understand that there's a lot of skepticism around that because the systems today have not kept pace. Our system is woefully inadequate and it needs dramatic investment. It needs improvement. But the proof here is the dramatic amount of investment that's happening right now. We have a lot of companies, Sabic and Shell and Lyondelle Bissell, all of whom have made major announcements in traditional and advanced recycling to begin to intervene in that space in order to bring their scale, their technical know-how and their capacity to start providing products that are based on waste. [00:37:23] Speaker 4: But you're talking about a couple companies. There's also an entire industry that's going to triple production by 2050. How are those two things going to meet anywhere in the middle? [00:37:33] Speaker 23: It's not going to happen this month or by the end of the year, but we're moving now. Old types of recycling need to be modernized and new types of recycling need to be brought on board. The good news is, they're coming. [00:37:48] Speaker 4: Back in Oregon, I found one of these new technologies. In South Portland, the plastic industry was showcasing a demonstration project. And on the day I stopped by, local lawmakers had been invited in to hear about the benefits of a new sorting machine that industry says will make recycling plastic more economical. [00:38:11] Speaker 6: If you want to step up above, you can see the machine in action. [00:38:15] Speaker 4: One of the sponsors was the American Chemistry Council. [00:38:18] Speaker 23: The idea behind that particular facility is if we improve the way that the recyclables move down the conveyor belt, right, so they get separated, we're going to create better, cleaner streams of like materials. When we do that, we end up with bales that are more easy to sell and that are more easy for consumer goods companies to incorporate into their packaging. [00:38:41] Speaker 4: But as we continued our reporting in Oregon, we heard about a surprisingly similar effort that took place more than 25 years ago at a recycling company 50 miles away called Garten Services. [00:38:56] Speaker 6: We're going into the office. I've got a couple of newspaper articles I want to show you from the past. [00:39:01] Speaker 4: The plastic industry had brought a demonstration project here in 1994. [00:39:05] Speaker 24: The Garten Foundation of Salem unveiled a new sorting machine that may change the way we recycle forever. This million dollar plastic sorting system in Salem is the first of its kind in the world. [00:39:17] Speaker 6: So here we've collected some old newspaper articles from 1994. [00:39:22] Speaker 4: Will Posegate is the chief operating officer of Garten. [00:39:25] Speaker 6: I mean, it says, "Sorts out the problem." [00:39:27] Speaker 17: A sorting machine, that's right. You got this from? [00:39:30] Speaker 6: From the Plastics Council. They wanted us to sort plastics when people thought plastics might be starting to be a problem. [00:39:37] Speaker 24: Today, the American Plastics Council unveiled the machine. They say residents will put all their plastic containers in one bag. [00:39:44] Speaker 4: It just keeps getting better, doesn't it? What happened to it? [00:39:47] Speaker 6: Years later, we shut it down because there was no way to make money at it. And we sold that $1.5 million machine for scrap. [00:39:57] Speaker 4: You sold the machine for scrap? [00:39:59] Speaker 6: For scrap. That's right. It didn't make any sense. And I'm afraid that the same thing is happening right now. This is the plastic that nobody wants. The whole idea about, "Oh, just sort better. It'll be great. Let's make more single-use plastics." Don't buy into that. Not a good idea for the environment. Not a good idea for the earth. Not a good idea for your wallet. [00:40:22] Speaker 4: You can't sort your way out of this. [00:40:24] Speaker 6: No. No. Period. [00:40:26] Speaker 4: It all made me wonder whether the plastic industry is just recycling old ideas. [00:40:32] Speaker 12: They said I couldn't drink. They called me a piece of trash and swore that's all I'd ever be. [00:40:38] Speaker 4: Like in the '90s, the industry has been spending money on ads. And now, I'm what I've always wanted to be. Encouraging consumers to recycle. [00:40:53] Speaker 21: Remember, a lot of the plastic packaging that you have in your kitchen is recyclable. [00:40:58] Speaker 34: Smoke jumping is the pinnacle of wildland firefighting. And touting the virtues of plastic. We're covered in plastic-based gear from head to toe. [00:41:20] Speaker 19: This is the world we see. [00:41:25] Speaker 10: Let's be the ones that came together to change the world. [00:41:30] Speaker ?: What do you think? [00:41:33] Speaker 25: Deja vu all over again. [00:41:35] Speaker 17: Why do you say that? Tell me about that. [00:41:38] Speaker 25: This is the same kind of thinking that ran in the '90s. [00:41:42] Speaker 17: What do you think the messaging is here? [00:41:44] Speaker 25: It's showing the people picking up the litter. That kind of implies that that's where the responsibility lay. I think the chemical industry, and the plastics industry specifically, need to take very seriously this reaction that's going on. I don't think this kind of advertising is helpful to them at all. [00:42:06] Speaker 19: Lately, there's been a lot of talk about how plastics impact our lives, for better or worse. [00:42:12] Speaker 4: The reality is, for all the ads and promises over the years, it's estimated that no more than 10% of plastic has ever been recycled. And the guy industry tapped decades ago to get recycling going isn't surprised. I showed Ron Leesmer industry reports we found dating as far back as the 1970s. And this one talks about the cost of separating plastics from other trash. There are various types of plastics. And that the cost of new plastic is so low that sorting and reprocessing used plastic can't be justified economically. And this was in 1973. Have we made any progress? [00:42:55] Speaker 26: I would say that their conclusions in 1973, you said, are still true. The economics that are described there are still prevailed today and likely will prevail tomorrow. [00:43:12] Speaker 4: It's hard to have faith in the plastics industry when it got out of its crisis in the '90s by telling Americans to recycle even though they knew it was not economically viable. The crisis passed. Now here we are again in a crisis. Plastics are once again on the low end of the public's opinion. And now the industry is telling the public again to recycle. [00:43:37] Speaker 23: The industry is not telling the public just to recycle. We've got to fix the recycling system. Clearly, that's job one. But more importantly, we have to look at reuse models, using less where we can, developing new materials, which is the plastic makers responsibility that can be better recycled. And also, really important that we deploy the technologies that are now available to us at scale. [00:44:01] Speaker 4: You don't think this is just an industry coming up with a way to get out of a crisis? [00:44:08] Speaker 23: No. No, this is about all of us understanding that we each have a role to play in making the system that we have better and achieving the goals that I think everybody would have to say we cannot continue with business as usual. It's time for change and this is that time. [00:44:23] Speaker 2: Let's put these away and let me show you another recycling label. [00:44:30] Speaker 4: Back in Oregon, I put the question to David Alloway. The question that people are going to have is what are they supposed to do to make this better? [00:44:41] Speaker 2: The common refrain in this whole field is that it's all up to consumers and that's the way recycling has been sold as well. Okay, and you just need to sort out your recyclables and do your part, do your part, save the earth, recycle. And when it comes to understanding and reducing the environmental impacts of materials, including packaging, consumers have the lowest amount of leverage. The big leverage is with the producers. Producers should disclose the environmental impacts of their materials publicly. And by impacts, I don't mean whether or not it can be recycled. I mean, what is the carbon footprint? What are the toxic emissions? How much water was withdrawn to produce this product? The effect on the planet? The effect on the planet. The actual product has. That's right. Here's this flexible bag and it's a plastic metal laminate. [00:45:37] Speaker 4: Alloway is a leading authority on the environmental impacts of materials like plastic. So you're saying consumers stand here and think, what can I recycle? But the question really is, how do I reduce? [00:45:50] Speaker 2: Reduce the impact. The producers know what the environmental impacts of these different formats are, but they don't disclose it. Instead, what they disclose is the recycling logo. Because what it allows industry to do is it allows industry to keep the conversation focused on recycling and never move the conversation on to the bigger issues, which are the full environmental impacts of all this stuff. [00:46:16] Speaker 4: But it isn't just industry that's kept consumers focused on recycling for so long. Environmentalists have too. Looking back, do you think putting the banner on the Mobro was a mistake? [00:46:30] Speaker 1: You know, I have looked at that picture and pondered that for decades. I think we were naive. I think we were overly optimistic about the potential of recycling and perpetuating that narrative led us astray. I mean, absolutely, society-wide, we bought this myth that recycling will solve the problem and we don't need to worry about the amount of plastic being produced. [00:46:54] Speaker 4: In Washington last November, during America Recycles Week. [00:46:59] Speaker 35: Welcome to EPA's 2019 America Recycles Innovation Fair. [00:47:04] Speaker 4: EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler was talking up the future of recycling. [00:47:08] Speaker 35: In many ways, we're just getting started. We need to increase the interest in and demand for recycled materials and more products made from recycled materials. [00:47:21] Speaker 4: Companies came with their latest ideas. 100 percent recycled content. Some, like Keurig, saw a need for better technology. [00:47:29] Speaker 16: Hi, I'm Laura Sullivan, NPR and PBS Frontline. What's happening with K-cups? [00:47:34] Speaker 19: K-cups are going recyclable. [00:47:36] Speaker 4: I mean, you've got a couple of hurdles in the sense that you're going to have to have people sorting out tiny cups, right? Ideally, mechanical sorting. How many K-cups do you sell? [00:47:46] Speaker ?: It's about 11 billion. [00:47:47] Speaker 8: 11 billion a year? So, the idea would be mechanical sorters pick out 11 billion K-cups, right? [00:47:55] Speaker 18: Ideally, we want all of them back. [00:47:58] Speaker 4: Others, like Colgate-Palmolive, saw a need for better education. [00:48:02] Speaker 9: So, we're here today to showcase our first-of-its-kind recyclable tube. So, if you put this in your curbside tonight, do you think that this tube would be recycled? We need more work. We're working with other organizations to get the word out. [00:48:20] Speaker ?: So, not yet? Not yet. Not yet. [00:48:23] Speaker 16: I noticed that you guys put the big chasing arrows. [00:48:26] Speaker ?: Correct. [00:48:27] Speaker 16: Do you think that because it's not quite recyclable yet, that that might be a little misleading? [00:48:32] Speaker 9: We don't think that we're being misleading because, technically, it is recyclable. [00:48:36] Speaker 4: As I made my way through the Innovation Fair... [00:48:39] Speaker 13: We are Keep America Beautiful. We're a non-for-profit. You guys have been around a long time. We've been around for over 65 years. The mood was optimistic. [00:48:47] Speaker 4: Less than 10% of plastic has actually ever been recycled. What do you think? [00:48:52] Speaker 13: Well, that is a challenge. And I think what's good is that we're all working together to help improve some of those recycling habits and understanding behavior. [00:49:01] Speaker 8: Do you think that America can recycle its way out of this plastic crisis? [00:49:05] Speaker 13: I believe with the proper infrastructure and the proper education, and we all work together as a collective, we can. [00:49:13] Speaker 8: The world is flooded with plastic garbage. [00:49:16] Speaker 21: 18 billion pounds of plastic waste end up in the ocean every year. The equivalent of a garbage truck dumped every minute. [00:49:23] Speaker 4: How is this conflict compared to what you saw happen in the 80s and 90s, when this sort of last came up with this kind of fervor? [00:49:32] Speaker 1: One thing that's different is the actual ecological context is different, that we are really bumping up against ecological limits. Like, we can't delay this for another 10, 20, 30 years. So this is it? This is it. For the oil and gas industry, the stakes are higher, too, because single-use plastic is their plan B. They're not going to be able to continue to drill that oil and gas and burn it for energy anymore, because the climate can't sustain it. So this is their lifeline. They are going to double down on single-use plastic like we have never seen. So we're heading towards a real battle. [00:50:10] Speaker ?: This is it. [00:50:11] Speaker 1: This is the big war. [00:50:13] Speaker 11: The UN estimates by 2050, there'll be more plastic in the ocean than fish. Plastic in your food. [00:50:20] Speaker 8: Micro-plastics are invading our water supply. [00:50:23] Speaker 4: How big a moment is this? [00:50:25] Speaker 5: I think it's a transitional moment. I think it is a big moment. Biggest you've seen? It's the biggest I've seen. This is the first time you've ever seen companies from across the whole supply chain all coming together to say we need to fix this. So you can talk about this stuff a lot. We have to show hard results. We have to start showing success. [00:50:47] Speaker ?: And we know that. [00:50:52] Speaker 4: 40 years on, despite a plastic crisis that's been getting worse, the industry's future seems bright. Demand for low-cost plastic continues to grow. And the production of new plastic is rapidly expanding. [00:51:09] Speaker 2: Science tells us that we need to significantly reduce our use of materials overall. And yet, for the most part, the policymakers are still focused with laser-like intensity on recycling. There's nothing wrong with promoting recycling, except when recycling sucks all the oxygen out of the room and we never do anything else. For the last 40 years, the conversation in this country has been about the recycle part of reduce, reuse, recycle. [00:51:43] Speaker 4: That wasn't an accident. No, it was not an accident. [00:51:46] Speaker 2: It was created. It was manufactured. [00:51:49] Speaker ?: It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. [00:52:23] Speaker 10: It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. [00:52:30] Speaker ?: It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. [00:52:39] Speaker 10: It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. [00:52:49] Speaker ?: It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic. It was created by the new plastic.