World Environment Day and the Great Recycling Scam

JUNE 5, 2025

For decades the petrochemical industry has lied and has set the agenda for solutions to plastic pollution that reflect its own interests.  Will WED25 substantially challenge this false narrative on plastic pollution?  asks Martin Franklin.

June 5th is World Environment Day.  This is an annual event sponsored by the UN Environment Programme.  It is attended by representatives from around 143 countries: business, NGOs, indigenous peoples, politicians and celebrities. WED has focused on just about every aspect of the global environment crisis. This year the focus is plastic pollution. It is the second time WED has addressed this problem in three years. 

Beat Plastic Pollution (BPP), the 2023 WED report, provides numerous links to detailed papers on plastic pollution along with campaigning materials and reports on community initiatives. The report concludes by lamenting the lack of progress on curbing plastic pollution. It notes that government policies are failing to address the need for regulation to curb the growth of plastic production and that the focus on recycling and disposal ignores the need to provide incentives to develop environmentally sustainable alternatives to plastics.  These failures reflect a long and successful campaign of resistance to such policies from the petrochemical industry. 

Plastic everywhere

Plastics are found everywhere on the planet, and micro plastics are present in our bodies.  They are in almost everything manufactured: vehicles, electronic goods, clothing, food products such as teabags and much more.  For consumers, avoiding plastic is very difficult.

Plastics vary in their composition and properties.  They have beneficial and irreplaceable uses, for example in medical technologies, but billions of tonnes of plastic are of negligible usefulness and quickly end up as waste. All plastics have some level of toxicity in their production and disposal.  

Plastic pollution is one of the most pressing environmental issues and its growth is exacerbating the climate crisis. Over 99% of plastic is made from fossil fuel-based chemicals so the industry is a very large consumer of oil. As the world tilts towards sustainable energy, plastics have become “Plan B for the fossil fuel industry”. Plastics is  a growth market, projected to constitute up to 50% of oil demand by 2050. 

Statistics on plastic production and pollution are staggering.  A study published in Nature estimates that humans have created 11 billion metric tons of plastic, surpassing the biomass of all animals, terrestrial and marine.

Plastic production is forecast to reach around 1 billion tonnes per annum by 2050. Twenty million metric tons of plastic waste is estimated to enter the environment every year and to double by 2040.  We inevitably notice plastic waste in our immediate environment but are probably unaware that it forms five floating ‘islands’ in our oceans, one estimated to be twice the size of Texas. Plastic waste directly effects marine ecosystems and health and is destroying the ocean’s ability to absorb carbon.

Plastic waste pollution also plays its part in global and regional injustice and inequalities. Waste dumping, processing and incineration is concentrated in areas of social disadvantage and poverty, making them environmental sacrifice zones. Globally this has resulted in ‘waste colonialism’. Global north countries have been exporting their waste to global south countries that are ill-equipped to process it.  Waste is often burned, buried or dumped, resulting in the pollution and destruction of local ecosystems, compromising the health and wellbeing of local populations. 

Petrochemical resistance to change

The petrochemical industry vigorously resists any reduction in the production and consumption of plastics. Indeed, their aim is to encourage more demand (especially for single use plastics).  To achieve this, the industry has used tactics to minimise public knowledge of the negative impacts of plastic, and to block or delay legislation threatening their business.

Organisations funded by petrochemical and oil companies, like the Alliance to End Plastic Waste, promote the view that plastic waste is the fault of consumers who are careless or ignorant about its proper disposal and so recycling becomes cast as a virtuous moral activity. Rather than eliminating plastic use and reducing its production, the industry’s solution to plastic pollution is a ‘circular economy’ and recycling.

Plastic recycling is difficult, energy-intensive and toxic. There are thousands of chemically distinct plastics that cannot be recycled together, so it requires meticulous sorting, and most plastics cannot be recycled more than once or twice.  They cannot form part of an environmentally sustainable circular economy; the triangular chasing arrows logos on plastic products intentionally mislead.

It is well established that only 9% of plastics are recycled.  But the British Plastics Federation produce figures that show 86% of plastic packaging is ‘recovered’ through incineration to generate electricity. This is not recycling and electricity generated by burning waste is more carbon-intensive than gas, second only to coal in producing emissions. 

Debates about recycling statistics are of minority interest but are part of a dominant discourse that shapes public understanding and discussion about plastic waste.  This has been a massive success for the petrochemical industry.

Recycling will never be able to cope with the rising volume of plastic and other waste. The petrochemical industry has known this for decades and companies and their trade associations may have broken laws intended to protect the public from misleading marketing and pollution.

Though positioned as a positive step towards sustainability, the recycling industry is itself a market player in the current setup, sharing an interest in the continuation of plastic production and waste as are the manufacturers of recycling technologies, incinerators and the energy from waste, transport companies and so on.

We are locked into a systemic problem of infrastructures and supply chains that shape our consumption and disposal of plastics and other waste. It reflects the interests of the plastics and packaging industries and prevents the real solution to the problem which is to cut production and develop sustainable alternatives. 

Prospects for change

International discussions on controlling plastic production and waste are ongoing. As laws and regulations are more restrictive than voluntary agreements, the plastics industry is more focused on blocking legislation. Voluntary circular economy commitments such as those proposed by Ellen MacArthur New Plastics Economy Global Commitment are of less concern.

This summer the Global Plastic Pollution Treaty negotiations restart. Oil producing and manufacturing nations and corporate interest groups will be resisting regulation.  The shadow of US President Trump, a loud advocate for fossil fuel interests, looms with his executive orders, recently reversing a partial ban on single-use plastics, such as straws, plastic cutlery and packaging. 

It’s a safe bet there will be little progress towards limiting plastic production from the current round of discussions and negotiations but it’s not the end of the story. 

The return of WED to the issue of plastic pollution, indicates the level of concern about the problem. Pressure for tougher regulations are firmly on the agenda. Discussions in Europe and elsewhere are pushing towards greater accountability of the petrochemical industry from governments, environmental NGOs and activists.   The hegemony of the petrochemical industry that frames the understanding and discussion of plastic pollution is weakening as the reality of the problem sharpens.

World Environment Day is positive in bringing countries together and giving ignored indigenous peoples a platform to air and discuss their environmental problems, spotlighting solutions and encouraging activism. 

What can we do? 

Plastic pollution and a solution to it is not about individual behaviour as it is currently framed, but is a matter of collective interests in conflict, a billion-pound industry against environmental and human wellbeing. 

Sort your waste but be aware that only up 50% of it is recycled and efforts to create a circular economy as currently conceived is greenwashing.  Minimise your use of plastic but be aware that the problem is one of over-production.  To that end, join campaigns organised by Greenpeace or BreakFreeFromPlastics that focus on the latter.  Join campaigns that are genuinely promoting change and not pushing the false solutions promoted by the petrochemical industry.

Martin Franklin is a member of the steering committee of the Islington Environmental Forum.

Image: Marine litter. Plastic bottles on a beach https://www.flickr.com/photos/snemann2/7825968422Creator: BO_EIDE Copyright: BO_EIDE-[47-90572171] Attribution-NonCommercial 2.0 Generic CC BY-NC 2.0 Deed