Now activists say Exxon Knew for years that very little plastic waste is actually recycled. The oil giant is deceiving regulators and consumers with claims that all plastics are recyclable and its “advanced recycling” processes keep enormous amounts of plastics out of landfills.
ExxonMobil “campaign of deception” demands a lawsuit, says California Attorney General Rob Bonta. “Exxon Knew” that 95% of plastics in recycling bins are incinerated, get tossed onto roadways, or end up in landfills and oceans.
“Exxon knew” it was peddling lies when it promoted recycling as a “cure-all for plastic waste” – because eradicating all plastic use and disposal is impossible and many plastics can’t be recycled.
This is Mr. Bonta’s latest attack on fossil fuels. He wants a jury trial, to help ensure big lawfare payouts. But he’s ignoring inconvenient realities and engaging in rampant deceptions of his own.
Plastics are ubiquitous: from eyeglass frames and lenses, to television, computer and cell phone housings, wind turbine blades and nacelles, solar panel frames, medical equipment, devices and garments, car and airplane interiors, backpacks, skis, football helmets, shoes, grocery bags and infinitely more. Plastic packaging preserves and protects products that involve long, expensive, resource-intensive processes to grow or manufacture; it helps keep foods from spoiling or becoming bacteria-infested.
Plastics are cheap to produce, can be molded into infinite shapes and sizes, are corrosion-resistant, and don’t break easily (imagine shampoo and body wash in glass bottles). They’re lighter than glass and even paper alternatives, meaning more can be packed on trucks and transported using less fuel. In many cases, there are no viable alternatives.
Plastics are essential for our living standards, safety and modern world.
But what happens when they break, wear out or get tossed? For years they were thrown out with other trash. But environmentalists, politicians and consumers increasingly demanded that cans, glass and other throwaways be recycled. For many of us, recycling became a habit.
Recycling turns low-value plastic garbage into valuable materials: window frames, boards for siding decks and fences, pipes to replace copper tubing that thieves steal, toys and toothbrushes, plates and utensils, diapers and clothing, carpeting and lawn furniture, soccer fields, bottles, cabinets, and more.
Neither ExxonMobil nor any other company promoted recycling as a magic solution or cure-all. It’s more expensive than virgin plastic, especially when transportation and sorting costs are factored in. Smaller items can clog sorting screens. Colored plastics have fewer recycling options than clear or white ones.
Most important, many types of plastics have little post-use demand or simply cannot be recycled. Others are integrated with electrical circuitry (motherboards and keyboards) or with paper or metal (laminates for food containers), making it impossible to separate and recycle them.
Thermoplastics can be heated, melted and reshaped or re-extruded into new products. These are the familiar #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 make 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 windshields, et cetera.
Styrofoam cups and egg cartons cannot be recycled without (rare) specialized equipment and processes.
Moreover, even thermoplastics can be recycled only 2-3 times, before their polymer chains get shortened to the point where quality and durability become so low that the products are unusable.
(Newspaper, magazines, copying paper and Kraft paper bags have the same degradation problem: 6-7 trips to the recycler, and the cellulose fibers are too shortened, damaged and degraded to be reused. Steel, aluminum and glass, by contrast, can generally be recycled endless times.)
All these complexities explain why only a small fraction of plastics are recycled. ExxonMobil recycling 60,000,00-80,000,000 pounds of plastics per year may seem minuscule, compared to 73,000,000 tons of annual US plastic waste. However, it’s equivalent to 430-570 offshore wind turbine blades (350 feet long; 140,000 pounds apiece) that only end up in Grand-Canyonesque landfills.
Plus, plastic wastes can also be converted into diesel, aviation and gasoline fuels, and even electricity.
An excellent solution is to turn plastics and most other garbage into electricity for our increasingly power-hungry society – especially as AI and data centers proliferate, and politicians mandate that we convert our gas stoves, ovens, furnaces and water heaters to electric models.
A municipal waste-to-energy (WTE) / resource recovery facility operated by Reworld/Covanta performs these wondrous conversions just a few miles from my home. Enormous quantities of normally landfilled, nonrecyclable home, business, industrial, government and agricultural waste are dumped into a receiving area, sorted for unacceptable materials (eg, rocks), mixed thoroughly and emptied into the combustion chamber, where everything is burned with natural gas at 2000 degrees F, until it’s totally combusted.
Process heat is converted to steam, to drive turbines that generate 80 megawatts of electricity, enough for about 52,000 homes. Since 1990, the plant’s electricity has replaced the equivalent of some 2,000,000 barrels of crude oil each year. Dust and odor are contained within the facility; water from the wastes is recovered, treated and used as coolant; and air and water pollutants are kept well below EPA standards.
Even plastic-and-metal e-wastes (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 are recovered from the resultant ash to build 20,000 automobiles annually. The process also melts and recovers glass – and even recovers metals from e-wastes, light bulb bases, paper clips, staples, and metal bottoms from cardboard juice containers.
By the time the entire process is over, only nontoxic ash is left – about 5% of the original bulk mass of trash – and it gets used in cement and other applications or sent to landfills.
It reminds me of the old stockyard claim: The only part of the pig that isn’t used is the squeal.
So I have a few questions for Mr. Bonta.
* If you banish oil and gas, where will plastics, paints, pharmaceuticals and other products come from?
* Which plastics and vital plastic products do you intend to eradicate? What will doctors, pharmacists, optometrists, computer and cell phone users, and other consumers do without them?
* Recognizing that California has closed most of its nuclear, coal and gas power plants; that its net-zero, all-electricity mandates will soon double the state’s electricity needs; and that the state already imports one third of its electricity from neighboring states – why aren’t you suing to fast-track WTE plants?
* Why aren’t you suing Governor Newsom, President Biden, VP Harris, your state legislature and yourself for fraud and misrepresentation about green energy that isn’t clean, green, renewable or sustainable?
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 advisor with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. This article was sourced HERE
“Exxon knew” it was peddling lies when it promoted recycling as a “cure-all for plastic waste” – because eradicating all plastic use and disposal is impossible and many plastics can’t be recycled.
This is Mr. Bonta’s latest attack on fossil fuels. He wants a jury trial, to help ensure big lawfare payouts. But he’s ignoring inconvenient realities and engaging in rampant deceptions of his own.
Plastics are ubiquitous: from eyeglass frames and lenses, to television, computer and cell phone housings, wind turbine blades and nacelles, solar panel frames, medical equipment, devices and garments, car and airplane interiors, backpacks, skis, football helmets, shoes, grocery bags and infinitely more. Plastic packaging preserves and protects products that involve long, expensive, resource-intensive processes to grow or manufacture; it helps keep foods from spoiling or becoming bacteria-infested.
Plastics are cheap to produce, can be molded into infinite shapes and sizes, are corrosion-resistant, and don’t break easily (imagine shampoo and body wash in glass bottles). They’re lighter than glass and even paper alternatives, meaning more can be packed on trucks and transported using less fuel. In many cases, there are no viable alternatives.
Plastics are essential for our living standards, safety and modern world.
But what happens when they break, wear out or get tossed? For years they were thrown out with other trash. But environmentalists, politicians and consumers increasingly demanded that cans, glass and other throwaways be recycled. For many of us, recycling became a habit.
Recycling turns low-value plastic garbage into valuable materials: window frames, boards for siding decks and fences, pipes to replace copper tubing that thieves steal, toys and toothbrushes, plates and utensils, diapers and clothing, carpeting and lawn furniture, soccer fields, bottles, cabinets, and more.
Neither ExxonMobil nor any other company promoted recycling as a magic solution or cure-all. It’s more expensive than virgin plastic, especially when transportation and sorting costs are factored in. Smaller items can clog sorting screens. Colored plastics have fewer recycling options than clear or white ones.
Most important, many types of plastics have little post-use demand or simply cannot be recycled. Others are integrated with electrical circuitry (motherboards and keyboards) or with paper or metal (laminates for food containers), making it impossible to separate and recycle them.
Thermoplastics can be heated, melted and reshaped or re-extruded into new products. These are the familiar #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 make 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 windshields, et cetera.
Styrofoam cups and egg cartons cannot be recycled without (rare) specialized equipment and processes.
Moreover, even thermoplastics can be recycled only 2-3 times, before their polymer chains get shortened to the point where quality and durability become so low that the products are unusable.
(Newspaper, magazines, copying paper and Kraft paper bags have the same degradation problem: 6-7 trips to the recycler, and the cellulose fibers are too shortened, damaged and degraded to be reused. Steel, aluminum and glass, by contrast, can generally be recycled endless times.)
All these complexities explain why only a small fraction of plastics are recycled. ExxonMobil recycling 60,000,00-80,000,000 pounds of plastics per year may seem minuscule, compared to 73,000,000 tons of annual US plastic waste. However, it’s equivalent to 430-570 offshore wind turbine blades (350 feet long; 140,000 pounds apiece) that only end up in Grand-Canyonesque landfills.
Plus, plastic wastes can also be converted into diesel, aviation and gasoline fuels, and even electricity.
An excellent solution is to turn plastics and most other garbage into electricity for our increasingly power-hungry society – especially as AI and data centers proliferate, and politicians mandate that we convert our gas stoves, ovens, furnaces and water heaters to electric models.
A municipal waste-to-energy (WTE) / resource recovery facility operated by Reworld/Covanta performs these wondrous conversions just a few miles from my home. Enormous quantities of normally landfilled, nonrecyclable home, business, industrial, government and agricultural waste are dumped into a receiving area, sorted for unacceptable materials (eg, rocks), mixed thoroughly and emptied into the combustion chamber, where everything is burned with natural gas at 2000 degrees F, until it’s totally combusted.
Process heat is converted to steam, to drive turbines that generate 80 megawatts of electricity, enough for about 52,000 homes. Since 1990, the plant’s electricity has replaced the equivalent of some 2,000,000 barrels of crude oil each year. Dust and odor are contained within the facility; water from the wastes is recovered, treated and used as coolant; and air and water pollutants are kept well below EPA standards.
Even plastic-and-metal e-wastes (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 are recovered from the resultant ash to build 20,000 automobiles annually. The process also melts and recovers glass – and even recovers metals from e-wastes, light bulb bases, paper clips, staples, and metal bottoms from cardboard juice containers.
By the time the entire process is over, only nontoxic ash is left – about 5% of the original bulk mass of trash – and it gets used in cement and other applications or sent to landfills.
It reminds me of the old stockyard claim: The only part of the pig that isn’t used is the squeal.
So I have a few questions for Mr. Bonta.
* If you banish oil and gas, where will plastics, paints, pharmaceuticals and other products come from?
* Which plastics and vital plastic products do you intend to eradicate? What will doctors, pharmacists, optometrists, computer and cell phone users, and other consumers do without them?
* Recognizing that California has closed most of its nuclear, coal and gas power plants; that its net-zero, all-electricity mandates will soon double the state’s electricity needs; and that the state already imports one third of its electricity from neighboring states – why aren’t you suing to fast-track WTE plants?
* Why aren’t you suing Governor Newsom, President Biden, VP Harris, your state legislature and yourself for fraud and misrepresentation about green energy that isn’t clean, green, renewable or sustainable?
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 advisor with the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) and the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise. This article was sourced HERE
4 comments:
“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”, (as they fulfil the “corporate agenda”).
Amazing to think that up until WW2, there were virtually no plastics.
Now we have become so dependent on them.
Twenty five years ago Olivine tried to convert Meremere power station to a W2E plant but ran into insurmountable objections from parties with other vested interests, i,e. landfill.
Much more recently, objectors to the Dome Valley landfill have had their objections dismissed, but this is now being appealed. Clearly the possibility of leachate finding it's way into the Kaipara harbour is acceptable the the Australian owners of Waste Management, the applicant.
A W2E plant north of Auckland , although not producing a large amount of electricity would provide an important role in stabilizing the grid system north of Auckland, and a search for "Copenhill" will show how clean these plants can be, and now this is probably old technology.
It's interesting that Ngárí Manuhiri Settlement Trust initially opposed the landfill application, but midway through the Environment Court hearing last year, it U turned, with Waste Management providing it with $2*million to build houses, a $10million "environment fund", the promise of jobs and return of the land when the site is no longer needed (as reported by RNZ) 29/7/2024
It is be worth noting that after a landfill is closed it will require aftercare, for up to 50 years.
*That's 1.6 Kianga Ora flats .
I get plastic have become ubiquitous and you say you have the solution. This municipal waste-to-energy (WTE) / resource recovery facility operated by Reworld/Covanta sounds wonderful so why is this technology NOT being used world wide? Why is the Ganges and the Amazon still floating plastic dumps?
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