Podcast: Sorting out the controversial history of plastics recycling

 

C&EN’s award-winning podcast Inflection Point leans on our 100-year archive to trace headline topics in science today back to their disparate and surprising roots. In each episode, we explore three lesser-known moments in science history that ultimately led us to current-day breakthroughs. With help from expert C&EN reporters, this show examines how discoveries from our past have shaped our present and will change our future.

In this episode, hosts David Anderson and Gina Vitale take the time machine back to the colonial US and also relive the revolutionary 1970s to understand the origins of plastics recycling. They also bring in C&EN reporter Alex Tullo to explain the different types of plastics recycling, how much plastic actually gets recycled, and the consequences of just tossing something in your recycling bin and hoping for the best.

Subscribe to Inflection Point now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The following is a transcript of the episode. Interviews have been edited for length and clarity. 

Gina Vitale: David?

David Anderson: Yes, Gina. What’s up?

Gina: Not to be like the style police, but are you wearing a Revolutionary War uniform right now?

David: I’m so glad you asked. Yes. What do you think? Do you like it?

Gina: Yeah.

David: I think I look kind of dashing, mysterious.

Gina: Do I like it?

David: Who’s that mysterious man in the Revolutionary War uniform?

Gina: Who is that mysterious man? Yeah.

David: I can’t help but notice you’re just wearing your 21st-century street clothes.

Gina: Right, yeah. I wanted to talk to you about that.

David: I had left some wardrobe options for you in the time machine. I picked them out myself. I thought that they looked really nice.

Gina: You know, I’m not really a petticoat person, actually. I don’t know if we talked about that.

David: Petticoat person, right.

Gina: I’m really a big fan of pants.

David: OK. All right, suit yourself. You can literally suit yourself.

Gina: David—

David: It’s kind of fun.

Gina: What are we doing here in what looks to be the colonial United States?

David: Right. Yes, let’s get down to business here. Well, yeah. You don’t recognize our environs here, Gina?

Gina: Our environs. I can’t say I’m familiar.

David: This is Paul Revere’s workshop. Paul Revere.

Gina: Paul Revere’s work. So that guy banging on a piece of metal or something, that’s—

David: Quote unquote, “That guy.”

Gina: That’s Paul Revere?

David: Man of legend. Yes, in the flesh.

Gina: Look, David, I know you’re a big history buff.

David: Sure.

Gina: And I respect that. I’m the science buff; you’re the history buff. Lennon and McCartney.

David: Yeah. Ying and yang.

Gina: Look, I know you love all the costumes that people wore back in the old days.

David: Sorry, uh, uniforms. Us in the history-buff community, we call them uniforms.

Gina: Right, I apologize. Uniforms.

David: Costumes. It’s not Halloween, for crying in the rain.

Gina: OK. I just, I feel compelled to remind you that this is not just a history show, right?

David: Sure.

Gina: We’re supposed to talk about science history, remember?

David: Yeah, OK. Well, I’ve caught you in another one of my little traps here.

Gina: Oh great.

David: Little do you realize that we are witnessing science history right now. You see, Paul Revere is not just metal smithing. He is recycling.

Gina: Come on, David. He’s banging a piece of metal with a hammer.

David: When you put it like that. Well, he’s banging a piece of metal that he melted down from another piece of waste metal. Maybe it was a horseshoe or a helmet or an old utensil, and now he’s reusing that material. So you see, Gina, the history of recycling in the United States goes all the way back to the very beginning of the United States.

Gina: Interesting. So in this episode, we’re going to explore the history of recycling?

David: Yes, and more specifically, plastics recycling. To begin to understand the origins of that, we need to understand the origins of recycling in the first place, and that involves this Revere character.

Gina: We should also explain the science behind what happens to your plastic after it gets picked up for recycling.

David: That reminds me, G. V., later in the episode, we also need to go back to the 1970s to learn about a Coke bottle that was designed by Monsanto.

Gina: We also need to understand how the responsibility of recycling shifted to consumers, rather than companies.

David: And while we’re in the ’70s, we should also check in on the set of this questionable PSA that I tracked down.

Gina: We’ll also explain why you shouldn’t just toss any old plastic in your bin and how much plastic is actually getting recycled.

David: What do you say, Gina? Are you ready to go back in time and sort this whole thing out?

Gina: Yeah, I’m ready, but— Oh, sorry, hold on a second. It looks like Paul Revere is, like, getting on his horse?

David: Oh wow. Yeah, he seems pretty worked up about something. I can’t— What’s going on?

Gina: Yeah, is he shouting something about the British, like “the British” or something? Yeah.

David: The British or something, whatever. I’m sure it’s nothing that we need to check out. Let’s go back in time.

Gina: This is Inflection Point.

David: Spanning a century of reporting from C&EN, this new podcast traces discoveries, from our past—

Gina: —to how they shape our present—

David: —and will change our future.

Gina: I’m Gina Vitale.

David: And I’m David Anderson.

Gina: So we’re here in 1775 because Paul Revere is an early adopter of recycling?

David: Yes. And actually, recycling goes back even before colonial times. In fact, one could argue that before the 20th century, everyone recycled in one way or another; they just didn’t call it that.

Gina: Everyone recycled in one way or another. I’m not sure I’m following you.

David: Well, OK. I’ll explain.

Gina: OK.

David: The idea of throwing out just about anything, you know, just getting rid of it completely, never using it again, throwing it in the trash, is a relatively recent phenomenon. In her book Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash, Susan Strasser argues that for nearly all human history, up to and even well into the Industrial Revolution, the idea of quote unquote “disposable goods” was unheard of. There was a market for anything; even kitchen garbage like bones could be bought and sold. Nearly everything was recycled or repurposed.

Gina: OK. Well, yeah, I guess if I ever need any bones—

David: Sure.

Gina: —I’ll let you know.

David: I’ll text my bone guy.

Gina: Yeah, right, get him on speed dial. But this episode isn’t about what we now think of as trash, like bones. It’s about—

David: Sure.

Gina: —plastics recycling, right?

David: OK. Well, I’m setting the stage, Gina. You know, the history of recycling actually even goes back thousands of years. There’s even evidence that the Byzantines recycled glass around 300 BCE.

Gina: OK. So why aren’t we in a glass workshop in Constantinople?

David: Again, setting the stage, Gina, my, my process, I’m, I’m weaving together a narrative.

Gina: All right, all right, all right.

David: OK? I’ve got this whole thing mapped out.

Gina: He’s got a vision. I’m sorry, don’t let me interfere. So, Paul Revere is recycling his metal. Why?

David: Well, it actually has to do with that whole Revolutionary War thing that Mr. Revere is so well known for. British restrictions on colonial metal production made it really scarce.

Gina: OK. So, metalsmiths like Paul got creative to stretch the metal that they had on hand, like the scraps that were lying around?

David: Exactly, yeah.

Gina: And I’m guessing here in 1775, those British restrictions must really be reaching a fever pitch, right?

David: Well, maybe I should welcome you to the history-buff community, because you’re absolutely right. This is the year that the Revolutionary War started, and this connection between recycling and war, or rather the material scarcity that war creates, keeps popping up.

Gina: How so?

David: Now the weaving of the narrative is starting to make sense. Let’s fast-forward a little bit. A couple hundred years after the Revolutionary War, during World War II, there was a massive recycling push by the US government. They wanted aluminum and other metals that they could melt down into weapons.

Gina: OK. Yeah, metal for weapons. That makes sense.

David: And they also needed metal for other things, like cans of food to send over to soldiers. The US even asked citizens to collect paper. During the war, lumberjacks were in short supply, so—

Gina: And paper is important for wars? The paper is mightier than the sword?

David: Sure.

Gina: Is that what you’re, is that what you’re saying?

David: Yeah, I understand your critique there. But think about it. Everything was on paper back then: letters, maps, records, you name it. You know, paper was used for other stuff too, like insulation for barracks, or on the outside casing of, like, flares, things like that.

Gina: Well, OK. I guess if I ever start a war, probably with you—

David: Boy.

Gina: —I’ll stop by the Office Depot first, get some paper.

David: OK, got me on edge a little bit. Anyway, back to the show. The government also urged homemakers to save their leftover kitchen fats to be used to make soap. And by the way, one by-product of the soap-making process is glycerin, which can be used to make nitroglycerin, like the explosive. So pretty handy for war stuff.

Gina: Interesting. OK, so people throughout this whole process got pumped about recycling, right?

David: Mm-hmm.

Gina: So then, what happens? How do we get from there to where we are now?

David: Well, even before World War II, things were starting to shift around in a few different ways. Around the ’20s and ’30s, more and more people started to have refrigerators at their homes. Also around that time, grocery stores were starting to become more popular. People are gradually having less and less need for, you know, stuff like maybe a daily milk delivery, just kind of gets phased out. You remember the Full House theme song, Gina, I’m sure. You’re a TV buff if there ever was one.

Gina: TV buff, sure.

David: The theme song goes— What is it? Uh, “What ever happened to predictability?”

Gina: [Laughing] Right, right, right. “The milkman, the paperboy, evening TV.”

David: I’m assuming you were laughing out of respect for my beautiful voice.

Gina: I was. Yeah, it was such a respect laugh. The only way I ever laugh at you, David.

David: Anyway, by the way, that song, I feel like we still have evening TV. I, I’m not sure—

Gina: That’s a really good point.

David: —it went away along with the milkman and the paperboy, et cetera.

Gina: One of those things is not like the others, but back to milk bottles here. I understand why milk delivery ran its course: people started getting milk in the grocery store, and they could keep it in their fridge for a while. But I don’t understand why plastic bottles came in. Couldn’t the grocery store just keep selling milk and soda and whatever other cool drinks they had in the ’50s in glass bottles?

David: The reason is convenience, Gina. That’s, It’s the American dream. Let’s go back to 1975.

Gina: Whoa. This is a pretty nice place.

David: See? Yeah, look, I mean, I thought you might like this location. We are here in the St. Regis hotel, where according to the New York Times archives, Coca-Cola is showing off their brand-new 32-oz Easy Goer bottle. Check it out. What do you think?

Gina: Whoa. OK, they look kind of cool. They’re that sort of tinted green color that kind of looks like glass, but they’re plastic.

David: [Glugging noises] Do you want some? I’ve been drinking this stuff all week. They just don’t make soda like they used to, Gina.

Gina: Wow, yeah.

David: I mean, the stuff in these bottles kind of has, like, a certain aftertaste to it that tastes like what I imagine a headache would taste like. It’s pretty incredible.

Gina: Yeah. I’m all set right now.

David: But do you see what it says here on the label? This is kind of interesting.

Gina: It says, “No deposit.” Interesting.

David: Right. This bottle you didn’t have to bring back. The reason it’s called the Easy Goer is that with the no-deposit thing, it’s supposed to be easy; you don’t need to return it. You see before this, the bottle deposits were set by the bottlers themselves. You would buy a Coke, and part of the price would be the bottle itself. When you return that empty bottle to the shop that you bought it from, you’d get some money back.

Gina: Right. And in the current day, at least in the US, it’s up to individual states to decide how much a bottle deposit is worth. Many states don’t even have a bottle deposit.

David: Right. So the idea with the Easy Goer was that companies spent so little making the bottle, they didn’t even bother to charge a deposit. They said, “Here, throw it out, do whatever you want, go hog wild.”

Gina: Interesting. But there’s something that doesn’t totally add up here. Coke bottles today don’t really look anything like this.

David: Well, I’m sure there’s a perfectly good explanation for that. Let’s take a look at my notes here. OK, let’s see. Got to shuffle through them; they’re a mess.

Gina: Dude, are these even in English? I can’t make out letters.

David: This again?

Gina: That it’s like a big, scribbly—

David: I have my own style of writing that I think is pretty cool.

Gina: No, but really, it’s neat.

David: OK. Well, back to my notes, which by the way, only I can decipher, it’s kind of a secret code. It looks like this bottle here was manufactured by Monsanto. So, that’s interesting.

Gina: Monsanto. Monsanto like the pesticides? The pesticide company?

David: [Swallows] One sec. I am so parched. It’s just incredible.

Gina: Yeah. It’s dry air in this hotel, in the St. Regis. Must have a dehumidifier or something.

David: But yeah, Monsanto, the pesticides company, they made this bottle.

Gina: OK. And what kind of plastic did they make it out of?

David: OK, back to my notes. Yeah.

Gina: I’m just curious. We talked about plastic. What are we working with here?

David: Could be important, yeah.

Gina: Yeah.

David: It says these bottles were made out of acrylonitrile.

Gina: Oh no, David.

David: What? Why are you shaking your head like that? What’s going on?

Gina: OK. David, first of all, you got to put that bottle down right now.

David: But it’s so good. [Swallows] Ah!

Gina: David, put that down. Secondly, I am sorry to do this to you, but this is not an inflection point.

David: Oh, OK. La-di-da, all right. I would love to know why not. I mean, all the elements are there. You’ve got cool hotel.

Gina: Oh, right. The hotel is cool.

David: A plastic product with a stupid name, an Easy Goer.

Gina: A quirky name, sure.

David: Monsanto is involved, somehow. I mean, it’s kind of the perfect tapestry of inflection point.

Gina: David, it is a great inflection point in theory.

David: Sure.

Gina: But this is the last episode of our season, David. We cannot just be spouting out nonsense. We got to be doing real inflection points.

David: Nonsense.

Gina: Right?

David: OK. My inflection point is nonsense now. It kind of makes me thirsty.

Gina: David, stop drinking from that bottle.

David: What’s going on?

Gina: Don’t you wonder why we don’t have acrylonitrile soda bottles anymore?

David: No, I don’t. I haven’t thought about it, actually.

Gina: The FDA banned the use of acrylonitrile in plastic beverage containers in 1977, just a few years after this.

David: For being too cool?

Gina: Because they figured out that acrylonitrile from the bottle could leach into the drink itself.

David: Oh, geez.

Gina: Our magazine actually covered this in 1977. The EPA classifies acrylonitrile as a probable human carcinogen.

David: Oh, shucks. Well, that sounds like a lot of bad news.

Gina: “Shucks.” It’s not great, dude. How many of those have you drank?

David: I don’t know. I’ve lost count. I’ve been hoarding them in the time machine. I’ve just been popping— I can’t help myself. I popped back to 1975 over and over and over to try and get more of these Easy Goers.

Gina: David.

David: Just something about them.

Gina: We’ve talked about this, how you can’t just keep using the time machine and getting— David, stop drinking from that bottle.

David: OK, all right. That was the last sip, and then I am done, for real. I am no more—

Gina: I’ve heard this before from you.

David: —no more from my Easy Goer. I’m going to pitch it in the trash, because they haven’t set up recycling yet.

Gina: OK. I’m watching you.

David: Back to the inflection point. It sounds kind of like the Easy Goer was a no goer.

Gina: OK. I am going to chalk that joke up to the acrylonitrile in your brain.

David: Probably is a lot of that.

Gina: But yes, the Easy Goer Coke bottle did not unfortunately change the course of history. So it is not an inflection point, but there is a different bottle which did do that.

David: Well, I don’t like the direction that this is going. Are you kind of taking over my inflection point here?

Gina: You betcha.

David: OK. Well, to be honest, go right ahead. I feel a little lightheaded.

Gina: Yeah, I think you might need to sit down. Buckle up, we are going to 1973. And sorry, where’s the button again? It’s this lever and then the button, or do I just do the button?

David: Here, I wrote down the instructions right here.

Gina: I’m just going to hit stuff until it works.

David: Just read the instructions that I have. I’ve wrote them out by hand. They should—

Gina: Sorry, is this in Davidese?

David: Yeah.

Gina: Is this in your weird language that you invented?

David: Well, you will have to crack my code if you want to get this inflection point off the ground.

Gina: I think I’m just going to press stuff. Oh, I’m going to try this one.

David: OK, all right. You got lucky with the button press. I guess it is the big red button that says, “Time machine button.”

Gina: Yeah, go back now.

David: Go-back-in-time button, yeah. Anyway, this is a cool spot and all, but 1973. Where are we? This is not as cool as the St. Regis in 1975 with my precious Easy Goers.

Gina: Um, on the contrary, this is much cooler than the St. Regis. This is the N. C. Wyeth House.

David: N. C. Wyeth. That name sounds familiar.

Gina: Yes. N. C. Wyeth was a very successful artist. This is where he once lived with his family, including his son, who was also very successful.

David: Right, right, right. Andrew Wyeth, the super-famous painter.

Gina: Sure. I guess Andrew Wyeth is kind of successful, yeah. That’s fair to say.

David: He’s the only Wyeth I’ve ever heard of. His painting Christina’s World, it’s in the MoMA, Gina.

Gina: Yeah, yeah. MoMA, schMoMA. Whatever.

David: Come on.

Gina: Who isn’t in the MoMA these days?

David: MoMA, schMoMA. Well, I’m not. Are you?

Gina: Sure. Yes. Andrew, the painter, the MoMA, very successful. But for this inflection point, I’m talking about N. C. Wyeth’s other son, Nathaniel Wyeth.

David: Nathaniel Wyeth. OK, what did this guy do?

Gina: Oh, nothing much. He just invented the plastic soda bottle.

David: Huh? What do you mean?

Gina: Let’s go back a little further in time. You see, when Nathaniel Wyeth was born, he was initially named after his father, so he was N. C. Wyeth Jr.

David: That’s very cute.

Gina: Very cute. But accounts in Delaware Today and MIT Tech Review say that he was such a naturally inclined engineer from such a young age that his father renamed him after his brother, who was an engineer.

David: Wow. I didn’t know you could do that. It’s also funny to me that there was just a naturally inclined engineer at a young age. I’m imagining a little 7-year-old over a drafting board, kind of, designing a bridge.

Gina: Yeah. He was just really shining, I guess. So, Nathaniel Wyeth, formerly N. C. Wyeth Jr., he’s a super-smart guy. He goes to the University of Pennsylvania for engineering, and he gets hired at DuPont.

David: So, how does he get into the soda-bottle business, Gina?

Gina: Well, according to those reports I mentioned earlier, somebody tells him that you can’t put a carbonated beverage in a plastic bottle. So he takes a plastic detergent bottle, fills it up with ginger ale, and leaves it overnight in the fridge. Sure enough, it swells up.

David: Right. But I’ve never seen that happen before with any soda bottle I’ve ever seen. So why did it swell up? Did he put it in the freezer by mistake?

Gina: Well, except for your little foray into the Easy Goer bottle, which was made of, you know, now-banned plastic—

David: Sure.

Gina: —you’ve only seen modern soda bottles. Here, back in time, Nathaniel hasn’t invented those yet.

David: Oh, OK. All right.

Gina: So that’s why the plastic detergent bottle is swelling up. So Nathaniel knows from previous experience that plastic gets tougher when it’s stretched out. So he comes up with a creative way to basically stretch out polypropylene so that it’s tough and clear and has the right shape. And then, eventually, he swapped out polypropylene for polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, and voilà, you have a soda bottle.

David: So famous-painter Andrew Wyeth’s brother invented the modern soda bottle.

Gina: Pretty fun coincidence, right? He literally called himself the other Wyeth, because his relatives were so famous.

David: I’ve heard people call me “the other cohost” before, so I guess I can kind of relate to that. Well, Nathaniel, I am sorry personally for not putting more respect on your name. That is very impressive. I will never call Nathaniel “the other Wyeth” from here on out.

Gina: Yeah. Mad props to you, Nathaniel. Anyway, Nathaniel gets the patent for this invention in 1973. As you might expect in the ’70s, Coke and Pepsi both come out with 2-L plastic PET bottles. And now, PET is everywhere. Lots of plastic soda bottles are still made of PET.

David: I think I’ve already got an inkling of how, but if you can explain, how does this tie back into plastics recycling, Gina?

Gina: You got it. PET is today one of the most widely recycled plastics. If you look at the bottom of a soda bottle with the little number in that triangle recycling sign, it’s literally plastic number 1.

David: Wow, OK.

Gina: Around the ’70s, plastic soda bottles are framed as being more convenient for customers, but it’s also very much about cost. Plastic is a lot cheaper than glass.

David: Huh, all right. Why?

Alex Tullo: So the materials themselves are cheaper than glass. They’re cheaper than aluminum as well.

Gina: That’s Alex Tullo. He’s a senior correspondent with C&EN, and he covers the chemical industry and also plastics. He’s kind of our go-to recycling guy.

Alex: There’s less energy and labor input ultimately for the plastics than there are for aluminum or glass. In addition, after the formation of the bottles and you fill them and so on, they’re a lot lighter, than glass especially, and there’s less breakage when you use plastics versus glass.

David: OK. So companies can make the same product for less money, it weighs less, and it’s much less likely to break. And they can market it to consumers as something that makes their lives easier.

Gina: Yeah. So we end up with plastic.

David: Seems like we’re ending up with more and more plastic every day.

Gina: A lot of plastic, yeah.

David: Yeah.

Gina: So I think we’re starting to understand how things like plastic bottles became so prevalent, but what I still don’t understand is how recycling comes into the picture, historically. When does recycling plastic become an individual responsibility?

David: Right. This part is a little sneaky.

Gina: A little sneaky.

David: There’s some kind of subterfuge here. Let’s say, Gina, that you’re a plastics manufacturer in the late ’60s, early ’70s.

Gina: Oh, OK, OK, yeah. Let me, sorry, let me get into character here a little bit.

David: Well, character. I don’t know if you need to get into character. That doesn’t really seem necessary. We can just do the exercise without.

Gina: Plastics manufacturer, OK. Pleasure to meet you. Name’s Gina Vitale, CEO, G. V. Plastics International. How can I help you today?

David: What, what are you— What is this? What’s going on?

Gina: Listen, I’m taking time out of my very busy day to meet with you, so if you can’t string together a few words to explain what you’re doing in my office—

David: Whoa.

Gina: —I’m going to have my assistant show you out. Kenneth, can you—

David: No, OK. Hey, hey, hey, before you sic Kenneth on me, OK? I can explain, Ms. Vitale.

Gina: It’s actually Dr. Vitale. I have a PhD in plastics. And what was your name again? John? Jacob something?

David: It’s David. We host a podcast together. Anyway, I’m here because there’s a problem with all the plastic that your company is creating, you know, the single-use kind of plastic.

Gina: Yes. That’s very lucrative for us here at GVPI.

David: Sure. Well, here’s the thing, Dr. Vitale. These disposable goods, you know, plastic bottles, cups, shopping bags, they’re creating a lot of trash, an unprecedented amount of trash. It’s piling up all over the streets, in parks, lakes. The public is not loving it. There’s this whole new environmental movement that’s taking shape, and—

Gina: Environmental movement. So what? A bunch of these long-hair dropouts come complaining to me with their Levi’s and their buckskin boots and their guitar music.

David: Buckskin boot.

Gina: What are they going to do, drum circle me to death? I am a captain of industry, John.

David: Wow. Again, it’s David, name is David, but . . . You got me all flustered here. Back to the environmentalists, they’re gaining a lot of traction. Even President Nixon has created a whole new government agency to protect the environment, the EPA. Dr. Vitale, they’re picking up a lot of steam here. It might make sense to start, you know, thinking about solutions.

Gina: OK. I’m hearing concern. I’m listening, Mr.— Sorry, what was it? Philip? Dan. Dan. Dan, what is your solution?

David: Dr. Vitale, I feel like you need to see a doctor. You’re having some sort of stroke. You must remember my name is David. Anyway, you need to figure out how to get the public to associate trash not with the companies that create and distribute it, not with your company, but with the individuals who intentionally or otherwise left the junk that your company created out into the world.

Gina: A little bait and switch, a little psychological trick. OK, I’m interested in that.

David: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Gina: What’s your pitch?

David: OK. I’ve got a bulletproof idea. This is guaranteed to work. I will tell you under one condition. As soon as we start the inflection point, can we please, Dr. Vitale, can we have the normal Gina back, the normal one who’s still kind of mean to me but in a more, just a less intense way?

Gina: You drive a hard bargain, Philip, but I’ll do it.

David: Come on. OK, let’s go back to 1971. Gina, are you normal again?

Gina: Yes, David, I am back to my regular self. I just have a master’s degree.

David: Thank God. Now that I have you back, I want you to take a look around. What do you see?

Gina: OK. Seeing those, like, foldy chairs with the back that says “Director” on it. So I take it we’re on some kind of movie set? You know I love movies.

David: Yeah, yeah, sure.

Gina: Let’s see, what would be filming in 1971?

Gina:The Godfather.

David: Different type of set.

Gina:Godfather would be really cool. What’s up, doc? Oh, Deliverance?

David: OK. Sorry, Gina, we’re not on a movie set. This is actually for a commercial, technically a PSA, a public service announcement.

Gina: A PSA, David? Not even like a short film? It’s like an ad?

David: It is cinematic.

Gina: OK.

David: It’s the famous Keep America Beautiful spot. It’s sometimes referred to as the quote, “Crying Indian PSA.”

Gina: Oh, right. OK, I feel like I’ve seen this before.

David: Yeah, it’s a pretty big cultural touchstone, even for those of us who were born after it actually aired. It starts with a man dressed as a Native American who was actually Italian American, by the way.

Gina: Oh boy.

David: And this quote unquote “Native American” is paddling through a murky, polluted bay. And later, as he’s walking along the road, some jerk tosses some trash out of her window, and it lands right on his feet.

Gina: Oh right. OK. And then he turns slowly to the camera and sheds a single tear, right?

David: Yeah, exactly. And then the voiceover comes in and says, “People start pollution. People can stop it.”

Gina: OK. Aside from the fact that they have an Italian guy playing a Native American person—

David: It’s not exactly ideal; it’s pretty problematic.

Gina: Yeah, cannot condemn that one enough. But isn’t the underlying message here good? People should be—

David: I guess.

Gina: —responsible for their trash?

David: Yeah, sure. You shouldn’t just throw your empty bottles on the ground. You especially shouldn’t throw a hamburger wrapper at someone’s feet as they’re walking along the street.

Gina: Yeah, that’s kind of rude.

David: But some might argue that responsibly disposing of all this plastic that companies are churning out should not be the sole responsibility of the consumer. The people making this stuff and making so, so much money from all this plastic stuff should take meaningful action. Many people say that those plastics companies should really provide the infrastructure to reclaim all this material.

Gina: Right. Like back in the milkman era, companies bore the burden of recycling and reusing their glass containers. They had a whole system in place to keep milk bottles or soda bottles out of the trash.

David: Exactly. And as soon as this burgeoning environmental movement starts to protest against single-use items, specifically the companies that manufacture those items help fund this very PSA.

Gina: Whoa, wait a second. I feel like I missed something here. I assumed this PSA was made by people who care about the environment and want to stop pollution. You’re saying that soda companies paid for this?

David: Yeah. I mean, remember earlier, all the subterfuge, you know, back when you were Dr. Vitale, you were kind of scheming about all these different ways you could—

Gina: Yeah, it was very schemy.

David: —foist the responsibility of all this plastic stuff onto individuals and not your company that’s making it.

Gina: Interesting.

David: This PSA was made by a group called Keep America Beautiful, a nonprofit started way back in the ’50s, and according to the American Beverage Association, some of the founding members of Keep America Beautiful were none other than The Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo.

Gina: So companies wanted people to feel responsible for their own trash, which included lots of plastic.

David: Yeah. And of course, it didn’t just end with the one ad. According to an investigation by NPR and PBS Frontline—

Gina: OK, I’m sure this will be good news.

David: Yeah. This investigation showed that the plastics industry spent millions of dollars promoting plastics recycling, even though internal documents showed that they were fully aware of how hard plastics recycling is to pull off, even as far back as the 1970s.

Gina: Yikes, OK.

David: In one report, plastics executives were presented a study which showed that plastics recycling is, quote, “infeasible.”

Gina: So on one hand, plastics producers are basically implying, recycling plastic is really cool, don’t get mad at us for making so much of it. And then privately, all the while knowing it’s not really practical to recycle the bulk of plastics that they were creating?

David: Right. According to NPR and Frontline, yes. And for decades, according to that report, the plastics industry themselves helped kickstart local curbside recycling programs, even though they knew at the time there wasn’t a practical market for recycled plastics.

Gina: Man, I need a minute to process this.

David: Well, it’s not all bad news. There are a lot of honest people pushing for recycling. If we zoom out a little bit to recycling in a more broad sense, recycling paper and aluminum, for instance, is really effective. An EPA report from 2018 states that about half of all aluminum beer and soft drink cans are recycled, while 96.5% of corrugated boxes were recycled, 96.5%. That’s almost all corrugated boxes being recycled.

Gina: OK. Well, that is good, at least. We can recycle some materials at a really decent percentage.

David: But that does make me think, Why isn’t plastic like that? Why is plastic so, so difficult to recycle?

Gina: Yeah, there’s, like, a lot of reasons. A big one is that recycling plastic is expensive, and making new plastic is cheap. Plus, each plastic is a polymer, that means a long molecule made up of a bunch of little building blocks. And in the recycling process, that polymer degrades a little bit.

David: OK. So new plastic is cheaper and better.

Gina: I know, it sucks. Also, every state or even different cities have different guidelines and programs. So it can be really hard for individuals to know what can be recycled where.

David: It is confusing. I’ve seen my dastardly neighbors try to recycle all sorts of weird stuff: Styrofoam, plastic bags, plastic toys.

Gina: Yeah. It just feels bad to throw things out and know that they’ll end up in a landfill. And, you know, sometimes containers or whatever just seem like they have the vibe that they could be recycled.

Alex: Yeah, that would be called “wishcycling.”

David: Oh, wow. There’s even a fun name for it.

Alex: Wishcycling is when you throw every kind of plastic material that you have into the recycling bin, wishing that it will actually be recycled.

Gina: That’s Alex again. Hey, Alex.

David: So in case my knucklehead neighbors are listening, why can’t they just chuck something into the recycling bin and hope for the best?

Gina: Well, to understand that, we first need to understand what happens to our plastic after we put out our bins on Tuesday night or, you know, whenever your recycling gets taken.

Alex: The main types of recycling that are around right now are mechanical recycling and some form of chemical recycling. Mechanical recycling is the process of sorting out the plastics, chopping them up, washing them, and melting them down into pellets so they can be used again and again.

David: OK. So the guys in the truck come and take this stuff in my recycling bin, and then all that stuff gets sorted out, cleaned up, and made into tiny little plastics that can, I guess ideally, be used again to make something else. Do I have that right?

Gina: Right. But people like your neighbors with their wishcycling are making it harder.

David: All right. Let’s say they throw in, you know, like, a plastic shopping bag. I see this all the time. People in their kitchens, they put all their plastics or all their recyclable stuff in a plastic bag just because it’s convenient.

Gina: Sure.

David: And then they throw the whole thing in the recycling bin. So that’s not going to get recycled?

Alex: So that’s the problem with wishcycling, is not only that does the object, whether it’s, like, a coffee stirrer or a plastic spoon, not only is that not getting recycled, but the possibility that some of these errant materials might get chopped up with the other stuff and make it all the way to the end of the process and be contamination that makes the properties of the final polymer less valuable. It doesn’t take much to degrade the polymer.

Gina: So not only will they not recycle your neighbor’s plastic bag, that bag might contaminate the other plastic that actually could get recycled.

David: Yeah. And it certainly hasn’t been me throwing the plastic bags into the recycling bin. That would feel pretty awful, to be ruining all that perfectly good recyclable plastic stuff out there.

Gina: Hey, you know, even if it was you, it’s not just you. Even in one plastic package, there might be multiple different kinds of plastics—

David: Didn’t say it was me.

Gina: —so it’s really tricky to avoid.

Alex: There’s very little way around this contamination issue. No matter how well these plastics is sorted out, you might still have some on some level. If you’re looking at just at a mechanical recycling, it’s really hard to get something that matches the purity of the original virgin resin.

David: So if after this whole recycling process, our plastic is not as good as the new plastic, does it go to waste? Can it still be used somehow?

Alex: So mechanical recycling tends to be downcycled. And what that means is that polyethylene terephthalate, PET, might go into polyester fibers instead of bottles.

David: OK. I think I’ve heard of stuff like this. Like when I buy a fleece at Patagonia that says that it’s made out of recycled fibers, that means that it’s literally someone’s old soda bottles?

Gina: It could be from those, sure.

David: That makes me feel a little bit better, I guess? But tell me, is it really not possible to recycle in a way that gives us, like, really, really high-quality plastic, kind of like close to brand-new plastic?

Gina: Well, that’s where chemical recycling comes in. Alex mentioned it earlier as the other big bucket of how plastic can get recycled. A very dumbed-down explanation of chemical recycling is that you’re applying chemical processes to break down and purify the plastics to get them close to the properties of brand-new plastics. And there are a few strategies for going about this.

Alex: One that is being commercialized right now and in operation right now is pyrolysis. Pyrolysis can take pretty much any kind of plastic, and you apply heat, no oxygen to it, and you can break up polymer into shorter lengths of hydrocarbons until you get to something that is, it’s sort of like a bitumen, like a heavy oil. And that could be processed in oil refineries and chemical plants to make chemicals, fuels, and maybe even plastics again.

David: That sounds cool. Why can’t we do that more?

Gina: Honestly, there are a few reasons. It consumes a lot of energy, the plastics are unwieldy, and sometimes the product yields are low. And depending on the strategy, you might still have to start with a relatively clean, uncontaminated stream of whatever plastic you’re trying to purify. Plus, Alex said over 90% of recycling today is still mechanical, so it’s hard to overhaul such an established system.

David: I get that. Change is hard. But all right, so we have the mechanical recycling and a little bit of chemical recycling. Now that we have these technologies, how much plastic is actually getting recycled? I mean, it’s probably a lot, right?

Gina: Oh boy.

David: Why “Oh boy”?

Alex: The data on that is a little bit old. The most recent EPA survey for the United States was done in 2018, and that data suggests a recycling rate for all plastics of 9%.

David: Sorry, just checking my headphones here. Did I hear 9%? Nine, not 90?

Gina: Nine, yeah, wow.

David: Nine? Just the one digit, nine?

Gina: That one digit, yeah. Nine is low.

Alex: Now we’ve gone through many years now, a few years of this sense of crisis around plastic waste, so it’d be interesting to see if that number went up or not since then, but 9%. So, you know, less than 1 out of every 10 objects gets recycled.

David: OK, Gina. So we’re in the point in the plastics-centered Inflection Point episode where I’m starting to feel a little depressed.

Gina: Yeah, I thought this might happen, but, you know, there’s a little bit of a silver lining.

Alex: Now if you look at particular kinds of things, the numbers get a little bit better than that. So the most recent recycling rate from NAPCOR, which is an industry organization, that’s about 30% for PET bottles. So that’s a lot better than 9%. And then the other commonly recycled plastic, which is high-density polyethylene, so your milk jugs and so on, that probably comes in at around 20% or more. But I think there’s a vital need for accurate information around that very question.

David: So PET bottles, you know, from our friend Nathaniel Wyeth, from that great inflection point, by the way, kudos.

Gina: Thank you so much.

David: With those PET bottles, we’re getting recycling in pretty high amounts, I guess, relatively?

Gina: Yeah. I mean, in this context, 30% seems pretty impressive.

David: So why PET? Why is PET so high?

Alex: The recycling rate in bottle-return states is much, much higher than in states that only have curbside recycling. So if you’re in California or New York or Michigan and you have bottle deposits, their recycling rates are much, much higher because people are taking their PET back to the stores and recycling, and they have a nice clean stream of recycles. If we had more states with deposits for bottles, that would get the recycling rate up, for instance.

Gina: More states with bottle deposits. OK, I guess that’s something that states can work on. Is there anything that companies can do? I mean, we’ve talked a lot about them trying to shift the onus of recycling onto consumers. Is there any way for us to shift it back?

David: OK. Yeah, now we’re talking. Fight the power, Gina. I like where your head’s at.

Gina: Yeah.

Alex: So there’s a lot of momentum, I think, behind extended-producer-responsibility laws, which would make packaging companies and other companies that are sort of creating the waste problem responsible for at least funding some of the solutions. So basically, they pay money that goes into a fund. They’re all different by state, but generally, they pay money that goes into a fund that goes towards recycling infrastructure and other kinds of waste infrastructure and so on.

Gina: Actually, seven states have enacted laws about extended producer responsibility for packaging, and more might come along.

David: And keen as I am for companies to take the responsibility for plastic waste, you know, is there anything that we can do, like, on a personal level? I hate to take the side of Dr. Vitale from earlier, but thinking about things on an individual level, is there anything that I as an individual can do?

Gina: Yeah. I always wonder how clean my plastic should be when I throw it in my bin.

David: Right. Yeah, there you go.

Gina: How much gunk do I need to be getting off exactly?

Alex: I think a good rinse is OK. I think that the main consideration there is not necessarily how it gets recycled because it gets chopped up and washed a number of times and so on before it goes into a new plastic again. So I think enough of a rinse from a yogurt container or a milk container, just so the can doesn’t smell when you put it out on the curb.

David: All right. Yeah, so don’t put stinky stuff on the curb. And I’m assuming, you know, obviously if we’re storing something like a strong pesticide or a bunch of grease in a plastic container, we probably should just trash that, right? We don’t want to contaminate the recycling stream with all that stuff.

Gina: Right. And speaking of contaminating the stream, how can we do a better job not wishcycling? What are we supposed to put in there?

Alex: In reality, only two plastics are recycled at any large scale. Those are your number 1s, PET bottles, which are your soda bottles and water bottles and other containers that you might have in your home, and high-density polyethylene, that’s plastic number 2, that’s your milk bottles or laundry-detergent containers. Outside of those two, material-recovery facilities don’t recover a lot of plastic materials.

David: Got it. So kind of like a wedding DJ, you got to stick to the ones and twos.

Gina: OK. And we should say this does depend a little bit on your local facility. Some of them can also take additional plastics like polypropylene yogurt cups. So you should check your local guidelines.

David: All right. So I’m getting the picture around recycling, but I know that we’re also just making, like, a ton of plastic. Even if we were to recycle 90% of it, that 10% would still be huge. We’ve talked a little bit about alternatives, like biodegradable plastic in our microplastics episode, but we’re still making too much of this stuff, right?

Gina: Yeah, way too much plastic.

David: Any advice on how to get those numbers down, Alex?

Alex: Buy less stuff. Buy less stuff, reuse things when you can, get creative about how you reuse things. So if you have, like, a nice open-mouthed container and so, use it a few times before you put it in the recycling bin. If you get one more use out of something, then you’ve cut in half the environmental, at least the greenhouse gas, footprint of whatever it is that you’re using.

David: So in other words, basically, recycle stuff in your own house before you even put it in the recycling bin. I guess that’s, like, the reuse part of reduce, reuse, recycle.

Gina: Yeah. Wow, Alex, this is all super helpful. I am going to be investigating my cupboards shortly for granola bags that I can reuse for other stuff. And I will be taking a close look at my recycling bin for any wrongful wishes.

David: And as always, I will be extra vigilant over what my neighbors throw away.

Gina: Very good.

David: Constantly digging through their trash, so we’ll see. But meanwhile, thank you, Alex, for joining us.

Gina: Yeah, thanks, Alex.

Alex: And thank you. It’s been a wonderful time.

David: Well, that’s another plastic history trip in the books.

Gina: Always a good time in plastic world.

David: If by a good time you mean, like, a huge bummer, then yes.

Gina: Yeah. The Paul Revere thing was pretty cool, right? You liked that?

David: Of course I liked it. I mean, I got to wear my fun little cos—

Gina: Your little costume?

David: Uniform. I got to wear my uniform.

Gina: Uniform, I was going to say.

David: That was fun. Always nice to play dress up, but, you know, maybe next season, we could not do anything on plastics. Like, maybe it won’t even come up? We won’t have anything to do with plastics next season?

Gina: Well, I mean, yeah, I don’t know if that’s realistic.

David: Use your imagination, G. V. There must be a way.

Gina: Well, plastic is involved with a lot of technology. I just don’t know if we can completely avoid, like, even mentioning it in a whole season.

David: OK. Let’s figure it out. We can do it right now. What amazing scientific breakthroughs are we going to go back in time to understand next season?

Gina: That’s a great question. We’ve got some exciting ideas kicking around, but we’d love to hear from you, our listeners, about what topics in science or emerging technologies you’d like to see us highlight next time around.

David: Right. Is there something that you’ve always wanted to know the history of? Is there a technology that affects your daily life, and you want to know if some wacky lab accident or patented soda bottle made it possible? Let us know.

Gina: Our email is [email protected]. You can also connect with us on almost any social media @cenmag.

David: We really hope you’ve enjoyed going back in time with us this season. I know that we have.

Gina: Yeah. I mean, I think we mostly have.

David: Speaking for both me and Gina, we have—

Gina: There were some dicey parts in there.

David: —enjoyed every part of it. I can say that with 100% confidence. Sorry, Gina, were you saying something?

Gina: I, you know, I think there were some dicey parts, if I’m being honest.

David: Dicey? Name one dicey part. I can’t wait to hear this.

Gina: OK. Well, like rubbing ox liver in people’s eyes in ancient Egypt. I didn’t love that, actually.

David: Yeah, it does— When you say it like that, it doesn’t sound enticing, but that’s where retinol comes from, Gina, that’s—

Gina: Or that one guy’s hobby submarine—

David: Hobby submarine.

Gina: —the, like, made out of wood. That was a little sketch, dude. Come on.

David: OK. You take that back, Gina. You take it back right now. That submarine was beyond legit. That guy is a legend in the submarine community. That guy, Narcís Monturiol—

Gina: Narcís Monturiol, right.

David: —was a legend in the submarine community. A legend.

Gina: My sincere apologies to the submarine community. But if you liked all the places and times that we traveled to this season, make sure that you’re following the Inflection Point feed wherever you get your podcasts.

David: We’ll be back in time again before you know it.

Gina: Inflection Point is a podcast project from Chemical & Engineering News.

David: Chemical & Engineering News is the official news outlet of the American Chemical Society.

Gina: Music by Kirk Ohnstad, Jeremy Barr, David Anderson, and Shutterstock.

David: Written, produced, and hosted by Gina Vitale and David Anderson.

Gina: Our audio producer is Jeremy Barr.

David: Our fact-checker is Michelle Boucher.

Gina: Email us at [email protected].

David: Thanks for listening.