Plastic recycling claims are deceptive and destructive. Wind and solar waste – that’s okay.
Paul Driessen
“Exxon Knows!” The battle has fueled and inspired climate activists for decades. Since the 1970s, he says, Exxon has known that human-caused climate change was “real” — but lied about it, claimed there was no “crisis,” and continued to market “planet-killing” fuel and petrochemical stocks.
Now activists say Exxon Knew for years that very little plastic waste was being recycled. The oil giant is deceiving regulators and consumers by claiming that all plastics are recyclable and that their “advanced recycling” process keeps vast amounts of plastic out of landfills.
ExxonMobil’s “campaign of lies” demands a lawsuit, said California Attorney General Rob Bonta. “Exxon Knows” that 95% of the plastic in the trash is burned, dumped on the streets, or ends up in landfills and oceans.
“Exxon knows” it’s a lie when it promotes recycling as a “cure-all for plastic waste” – because eliminating all plastic use and disposal is impossible and most plastics cannot be recycled.
This is Mr. Bonta’s last attack on fossil fuels. They want a jury trial, to ensure a large legal payout. But they ignore the inconvenient facts and commit massive fraud.
Plastic is everywhere: from eyeglass frames and lenses, to televisions, computers and mobile phone housings, wind turbine blades and nacelles, solar panel frames, medical equipment, tools and clothing, car and airplane interiors, backpacks, skis, helmets football, shoes, grocery bags and endless others. Plastic packaging preserves and protects products that require long, expensive, and resource-intensive processes to grow or produce; helps prevent food from spoiling or becoming infected with bacteria.
Plastics are cheap to produce, can be printed in infinite shapes and sizes, are corrosion resistant, and don’t break easily (imagine shampoo and body wash in glass bottles). They are lighter than glass and even paper alternatives, meaning more can be packed into trucks and transported using less fuel. In some cases, there is no viable alternative.
Plastics are essential to our standard of living, safety and the modern world.
But what happens when it is damaged, broken or thrown away? For years they were thrown out with other garbage. But environmentalists, politicians and consumers are increasingly demanding that cans, glass and other waste be recycled. For many of us, recycling is a habit.
Recycling turns low-value plastic waste into useful materials: window frames, boards for decks and fences, pipes to replace stolen copper pipes, toys and toothbrushes, dishes and utensils, diapers and clothes, rugs and lawn furniture, fields footballs, bottles, cabinets, and more.
Neither ExxonMobil nor any other company is promoting recycling as a miracle solution or panacea. It is more expensive than virgin plastic, especially when transportation and sorting costs are factored in. Small items can clog the sorting screen. Colored plastics have fewer recycling options than clear or white ones.
Most importantly, many types of plastic are either unwanted after use or simply cannot be recycled. Others are integrated with electrical circuits (motherboards and keyboards) or with paper or metal (laminate for food containers), so they cannot be separated and recycled.
Thermoplastics can be heated, melted and reshaped or re-extruded into new products. These are #1 (PET) soda and water bottles, #2 (HDPE) milk and detergent containers, many #4 (LDPE) grocery bags and squeezable bottles, and some #5 (PP) yogurt and butter containers.
Thermoset plastics contain polymers that form irreversible chemical bonds that create strong products that cannot be remelted: vulcanized rubber for tires, Bakelite kitchenware, jewelry and circuit boards, epoxy resins, Duroplast car bodies and toilet seats, polyurethane cushions, insulation and the front page, etc. .
Styrofoam cups and egg cartons cannot be recycled without special equipment and processes (rare).
In addition, even thermoplastics can be recycled only 2-3 times, before the polymer chain is shortened to such an extent that the quality and durability are so low that the product is unusable.
(Newspapers, magazines, copy paper and Kraft paper bags have the same degradation problem: 6-7 trips to the recycler, and the cellulose fibers are too short, damaged and destroyed to be reused. Steel, aluminum and glass, by contrast, can generally endlessly recycled.)
All these complexities explain why only a small fraction of plastic is recycled. ExxonMobil’s recycling of 60,000,000-80,000,000 pounds of plastic per year may seem small, compared to the 73,000,000 ton annual US plastic waste. However, it is equivalent to the 430-570 offshore wind turbine blades (350 feet long; 140,000 pounds each) located in the Grand-Canyonesque Landfill alone.
In addition, plastic waste can also be converted into diesel fuel, aviation and gasoline, and also electricity.
A good solution is to turn plastic and most other waste into electricity for an increasingly electricity-hungry society – especially as AI and data centers develop, and politicians order us to convert gas stoves, ovens, furnaces and water heaters to electric models.
A waste-to-energy (WTE)/municipal resource recovery facility operated by Reworld/Covanta is doing an amazing conversion just a few miles from my house. Household, business, industrial, government and agricultural waste that is normally discarded, cannot be recycled, is thrown into a reception area, sorted for unacceptable materials (for example, stone), thoroughly mixed and emptied into an incinerator, where everything is incinerated using natural gas. at 2000 degrees F, until completely combusted.
The process heat is converted into steam, to drive turbines that generate 80 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 52,000 homes. Since 1990, the plant’s electricity has replaced the equivalent of about 2,000,000 barrels of crude oil annually. Dust and odors are present in the facility; water from waste has been recovered, treated and used as a coolant; and air and water pollutants are kept below EPA standards.
Even plastic-and-metal electronic waste (computers, monitors, keyboards, printers, and AI and data center machines) and “clean, green” energy equipment like solar panels can be “recycled” this way.
Enough iron, steel, aluminum, copper and other metals recovered from the resulting ash to build 20,000 cars a year. The process also melts and recovers glass – and even recovers metal from e-waste, light bulb bases, paper clips, staples, and metal bases from carton juice containers.
When the whole process is over, only non-toxic ash remains – about 5% of the original waste mass – and is used in cement and other applications or sent to landfill.
It reminds me of an old stockyard saying: The only part of a pig that isn’t used is the squeal.
So I have a question for Mr. Bonta.
* If you waste oil and gas, where do plastics, paints, medicines and other products come from?
* What important plastics and plastic products do you want to eliminate? What would doctors, pharmacists, optometrists, computer and cell phone users, and other consumers do without it?
* Recognize that California has shut down most of its nuclear, coal and gas-fired power plants; the net-zero, all-electricity mandate will soon double the country’s electricity needs; and the country already imports a third of its electricity from neighboring countries – why don’t you demand a WTE plant as soon as possible?
* Why don’t you sue Governor Newsom, President Biden, VP Harris, the state legislature and yourself for fraud and misrepresentation about clean, green, renewable or sustainable green energy?
It’s time to recognize that “progressive” policies, mandates and lawsuits impose enormous costs on taxpayers, consumers and our environment – while politicians feed citizens a steady diet of lies.
Paul Driessen is a senior policy analyst for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books and articles on energy, environment, climate and human rights issues.
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