The companies polluting the planet have spent millions to make you think recycling will save us.

[CousinIT]

https://www.businessinsider.com/fossil-fuel-companies-spend-millions-to-promote-individual-responsibility-2021-3

. . .

So it was clear to him that around the year 2000, fossil-fuel companies changed marketing tactics. After decades of denial, they pivoted to blaming the climate crisis on you and me.

Franta pointed to a 2007 Chevron ad campaign called "Will you join us?" Each poster featured a person's face and a pledge — promises like, "I will leave the car at home more" and "I will finally get a programmable thermostat." In small print, Chevron describes its own initiatives to be energy-efficient.

On the campaign's now-defunct website, users could even make pledges like carpooling to work a few days per week, and a calculator would tell them how many DVDs they could watch with the energy saved.

"The framing is: 'No, we the companies are the good ones. We're working on the problem and we want you, the consumer, to join us in our positive efforts,'" Franta said.

This approach — telling people to solve a crisis by changing their own habits — is a tried and true corporate tactic, pioneered by the tobacco and plastics industries. Now, fossil-fuel giants like Chevron, BP, and ExxonMobil have spent millions to convince the public that consumer choices and lifestyle changes will solve the problem.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. Reduce is first. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Recycle is last resort of the trio. . . . nt

[Caliman73]

6. True, but the point is that even with those efforts, real change requires systemic change.

The point is that Companies like Chevron, plastics manufacturers, and others release way more carbon and pollutants into the environment than individuals. They have to change the way they do business, but in an effort to NOT change themselves, they put the responsibility on us, the customer, to change our behaviors. They try to shift the burden onto individuals rather than industry wide changes, which would actually have an effect on things.

Reducing waste, reusing, and recycling are not bad strategies, but we have to understand that those were not actually, effective tactics and they were being sold to us, specifically by industry, in order to keep them off the hook for having to change their practices.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

8. Yes, it seems that way. . . . nt

[marble falls]

2. Recycling is a sort of carrot. And worse it's a fake carrot. Recycling is best accomplished ...

... through multiple reuse.

[Amishman]

3. And most recycling programs are a lie

And it ends up in a landfill anyway.

[marble falls]

5. I had to pay people to take my recycle plastic and tin cans. We killed plastics as much as ...

... possible and use very, very few canned products.

It's a real commitment that has to do with personal health as it does the planet.

[ProfessorGAC]

4. Plastics Recycling Is Almost Mythical

There is no economically viable process for using any more than a smattering of recycled plastic in new product.
There is no method on the horizon either.
The recover of used plastic causes fracturing of chains, & great difficulty of obtaining cross linking with the reused plastic. So, it makes shoddy product with tensile strength issues.
Deposits & reuse of packaging (like the old days of pop & milk bottles) is the only immediately impactful step.
Or, switch back to glass and recycle that, although transportation costs will soar due to weight of packaging.
But, in the BEST of situations with the most diligent recyclers, only 6-8% of plastic is actually recycled.
It's mostly propaganda, and now they want all of us to be responsible for carrying out their mythical efforts.

[marble falls]

7. That's the business model - give you the problem and sell you the cure.