Plastic recycling claims are deceptive and destructive. Wind and solar waste – never mind.
Paul Driessen
“Exxon Knew!” The battle cry has inflamed and inspired climate activists for decades. Since the 1970s, they allege, Exxon Knew that human-caused climate change is “real” – but lied about it, claimed there wasn’t a “crisis,” and kept marketing its “planet-killing” fuels and petrochemical feed stocks.
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 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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while politicians and the media feed citizens a steady diet of lies.
and academia!
All plastics are non toxic. You can eat them and nothing happens.
Shit happens.
Not all. Most, yes.
Name the toxins in plastic.
You can’t.
There may be additives that are questionable, but those are not plastics.
I think you may have missed the most important point.
I believe it was the president of Exxon (perhaps Chevron?) that stomped into the company chemistry lab with a bucket of toxic waste. He explained that it was costing a fortune to deal with the stuff and demanded to know why they couldn’t make it non toxic. A few weeks later some very excited chemists came to his office to tell him that not only did they find a way to make it non toxic, they found a way to make it useful.
So, if we don’t make plastic, what do we do with the toxic waste?
As for banning gas and diesel vehicles, good luck. Over 80% of all vehicles sold this year are still ICE. Properly maintained, most of them will run for 20 years, many for 30. So even if we phase out ICE over the next 10 to 20 years (good luck with that too) we will have most cars on the road burning gasoline and diesel for another four decades minimum, probably more like 6 to 8.
So go ahead and ban plastic (another see what happens, good luck with that) but tell me. What should we do with the toxic waste?
Sue someone else to gain another political use financial stream.
Gasoline and diesel powered vehicles won’t be still running if gasoline and diesel are made unavailable or too expensive for 90% of the population.
The criminal (allegedly) politicians will go before that happens – even in California. Young people (voters) growing up will soon outnumber the silly old hippy libtards. Pelosi will be gone, Newsom in the “where are they now files”. One can hold out hope for the State.
I have an antique 1-gallon Clorox bottle. I can imagine there were quite a few more spills from accidental drops before they switched to plastic.
Pretty regular occurrence: Glass milk bottle gets broken on the dinner table. Aside from the milk everywhere, broken glass. I can still hear my dab saying “You damned kids tou think this stuff grows on trees?”
Can’t get rid of plastic. What will the politicians and other elites do when they want to play golf?
I used to be a chemist at a refinery. One of my tasks was to determine how much waste could be blended into diesel fuel and fuel oil and still meet blending/quality specs. A simple way to incinerate streams that otherwise had no economic value. To the uneducated it sounds horrible: toxic slidge blended into fuel oil. In practice it was blended in minute quantities and reliably incinerated in the end user combustion process
Isn’t that a straw man argument? The goal is not to banish them but to turn them into a large financial stream to be used for political purposes.
Only until such time as it becomes too expensive.
BINGO. It is not a coincidence that DAs are going after energy companies in the same manner they extorted money from the tobacco companies.
So What If CO2 Is Not A Problem ?
We adopt futile and expensive policies such as “Nett Zero”™ which has no basis in fact, is completely unattainable virtue signalling by people who can afford to live with the costly consequences.
We attempt to recycle plastics – a costly failure with most of it ending up in the oceans (often in the recycle bag provided by the local council). We would be far better off burning it. Plastics are an energy dense fuel we can combust cleanly and generate power with it.
It is more valuable as a fuel than as recyclable scrap meaning it is much more likely to be collected and then permanently disposed of by burning.
Japan, South Korea, Finland, Sweden and Indonesia do just this and it can be done cleanly – but you certainly won’t find much support and plenty of nay-sayers if you search the topic.
Plenty of strawman arguments to be found, such as “it will increase our use of single use plastics” – nothing wrong with single use plastics if we cleanly and permanently dispose of them. Not to mention prolific arguments about all manner of nasty cancer causing fumes that “can” be emitted by burning plastic – true if you just set fire to a random pile of plastic junk in your backyard – but not if combusted by appropriate methods & technologies – whereafter any unavoidable noxious gasses and particulates can be removed by scrubbers and precipitators. Why is it the alarmists never consider our ability to actually deal with problems ?
We replace plastics with more expensive and less serviceable “organic” materials such as paper, cardboard, wood and bamboo – which ends up in landfills anyway and takes many years to decompose giving up its carbon as CO2 or methane – so you might as well just burn it anyway.
Almost all single use materials can be burned efficiently and cleanly thus “recycling” some of the energy contained therein – we don’t do so because of an unfounded, zealotrous belief that CO2 will bring about a “Climate Catastrophe”™
The problem is we will end up spending vast amounts of money on a non-problem that might be far better spent on other more pressing social and environmental problems.
Worse it leads to us doing things that are counter-productive:——-
We put solar panels on our roof tops – and then cut down or trim trees which shade them (and the house) – but vegetation absorbs CO2 and cools the local temperature (and the house).
We mow down entire forests in pursuit of carbon neutral energy production (wood pellet production for power stations and even home heating systems).
We cut down trees and forests to make way for wind turbines or a local light rail route etc.
We cover scarce arable land with solar panels.
We use food to fuel our cars (Ethanol from corn using 20% of grain production).
We build huge unsightly forests of wind turbines which are expensive, largely a useless overburden to a power grid and are extremely damaging to bird and bat populations.
We waste money buying electric cars for 50% to 100% more for a vehicle that has significantly less utility than an ICE powered vehicle.
Stupidity has no bounds…
We?
The we is those of us being forced to follow the diktates.
OK, don’t agree with everything there, but should be promoted to a main story posting.
Dumb thing we ever did is try to bury our garbage. We did up metals they are stable oxides, we change them to pure metals than bury then and then wonder why they migrate. The same true for oil. In and oxygen environment oil is rapidly consumed, in an airless environment it remains to migrate. The old dumps pile up the garbage and burn it was a far better solution than burying it. Modern incinerators remove all the old problems.
Your point is well taken.
Ironically, barriers made of plastic are now used to prevent migration of contaminants into the surrounding environment and methane is sometimes captured from capped landfills to be used for power generation.
Yeah. Virtually all of the final drops to residential end users is plastic.
In grade school, the school had its own incinerator. Virtually everything went into it. But keep in mind when brown bags were really brown bags and food was wrapped in waxed paper.
On the downside, in a residential neighborhood and zero emissions controls.
Now if they had generated hot water for heat and utility usage…but the cost and complexity at the time was probably not worth it.
More surreptitious misinformation and disinformation from Exxon-
Scientists discover giant missing blob of water in the middle of the Atlantic
Everybody knows the science is settled
Who would have thought to look in the ocean for missing water?
The Talking Heads were onto it – on, in my opinion, the greatest album of all time:
“There is water at the bottom of the ocean”, Remain in Light (1980)
How can something be “missing” if they never knew it existed in the first place. ?
Ah, but remember, the Exxon Knew lawsuit showed that it was all a lie about Exxon perpetrated by globalist money — they were laughed out of court.
I’m surprised to find this on WUWT, with such slanted reporting and arguments. Many important points, and then a magical “solution”.
The author has brought a lot of research to his critique, but *none* to his “solution”.
Incinerator powered electricity generation is great in principle. We had one proposed near us some years ago, but ended up fighting it because of studies that showed significant pollution. Apparently the plants aren’t actually *run* in ways that destroy all pollutants, as thst is too expensive.
People who choose perfect over good are never satisfied.
True. They “promoted” it as a PR trick to calm the public. They don’t give a shyte for recycling.
No. The only complexity is that recycling or converting are not as profitable as simply mining fossils. That’s why ExxonMobil was lying about its studies, and this is why it only pretends to be caring about recycling.
It’s as if everyone else is pure of heart. I’m sure Kim Kardashian uses no plastic straws on her private jet when she gets a hankering for some French cheesecake.
Opinion, not fact.
Have you actually read any of those studies?
Media headlines tell one story. Actually reading the reports tells something different.
Plus, how many of those recycling promotions (PR tricks) were sponsored by the government?
Yes.
Government is just a facade for these big companies like ExxonMobil
“They “promoted” it as a PR trick to calm the public.”
…. and Bonta is using it as a PR trick to get votes.
May the biggest shitpile of lies win.
No plastics means no EVs……back to horses and wagons. Newscum is a heavy user of plastics,
Chrome steel bumpers, glass headlight and taillight lenses, alloy water pumps, inlet manifolds and rocker covers, all leather upholstery, wood dashes, steering wheels and decorative masonite door cards and woollen carpets? Could work.
The problem with burning plastic is the Chlorine atoms within, they convert to HCl and then to hydrochloric acid when combined with water, very corrosive, and harmful, not to mention the DLC dioxin like chemicals, I would love to burn plastics and get one last use, but the Chlorine is a problem
Yeah, keeping PVC out is a challenge. One can address this technically through engineering controls, such as a combination of x-ray fluorescence analyzers, automated sorting and scrubbing. Such controls only work economically at large scale with good control of feed.
Just add sodium.
It seems there are two basic processes used to burn plastic waste: Pyrolysis, and Incineration.
The attached link describes the differences. In general, it seems that Incineration produces more polluting byproducts than Pyrolysis. However, Pyrolysis is a new and developing technique, so Incineration is currently more prevalent.
Unfortunately, most of the studies on this issue, that I’ve come across, seem to include CO2 as a pollutant, which confuses the issue.
https://contec.tech/pyrolysis-vs-incineration-waste-to-resource/
Pyrolisis is one of the oldest technologies there is. It is how charcoal, turpentine, and coke have been made for hundreds, even thousands, of years.
While aluminum can be recycled, it is not 100% recyclable. It was discovered in WWII, that recycled aluminum had to be mixed with 50% ran/new aluminum or the structural integrity was reduced to the point wings fell off aircraft.
I acknowledge technology has advanced. Perhaps there is something available that allows 100% recycling. I do not know.
Without very extensive sorting, or the addition of virgin material, it is impossible to get the formulations for specialty alloys right.
I doubt that such purity is needed for beer cans.
Exxon knew everything….especially the popularity of cars and trucks….it must be their fault…
I’ve always found that one strange, since no one can tell you, even today, a numerical value for ECS to a doubling of CO2. Nor can anyone tell you where it was defined in scientific terms.
Fossil fuels have given us the standard of living we enjoy today. We must remember that the people that would like to stop any use of fossil fuels are the same people that believe people have a right to choose the sex they were born with, that skin color determines your value to society, that religion is detrimental to government, that it’s OK to commit crimes as long as it’s corporations that lose, and that man controls the climate.
Did Exxon know? Sure. So what? Everybody knows that recycling is expensive, useless, and counterproductive. That’s not all. Just look at what everybody knows:
“Everybody Knows” By Leonard Cohen & Sharon Robinson
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody’s got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybodies talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long-stem rose
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you’ve been faithful
Ah, give or take a night or two
Everybody knows you’ve been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows, everybody knows, everybody knows
That’s how it goes, everybody knows: rep
And everybody knows that it’s now or never
Everybody knows that it’s me or you
And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah, when you’ve done a line or two
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old Black Joe’s still pickin’ cotton
For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows
And everybody knows that the Plague is coming
Everybody knows that it’s moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there’s gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
What everybody knows
And everybody knows that you’re in trouble
Everybody knows what you’ve been through
From the bloody cross on top of Calvary
To the beach of Malibu
Everybody knows it’s coming apart
Take one last look at this Sacred Heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows
Everybody knows, everybody knows, that’s how it goes
Yes indeed. We seem to be stuck on Medieval, Biblical or earlier or, as the French say: “plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”.
Human-haters should just learn to live with their own genes and leave other people alone.
Well done Paul. We clearly have a government problem not a climate problem. Bureaucrats and administrators like Rob Bonta are the worst of the worst. We need to hold mongrels like him accountable for the damage they are causing. It is the radical environmentalists who are responsible for the unrealistic recycling expectations. They are liars and cheats.
Tulsa Oklahoma has a waste to energy power plant owned ny the city and operated by a 3rd party. One of the few government projects that actually not only works but turns a profit.
Garbage to energy is an expense, not an investment. It is a combination – high priced garbage compactor and virtue signal.
GTE yields an average 650 KWh/ton, putatively. One ton of coal yields 8150 KWh/ton, 12 times more. It is not even certain that paltry energy is returned since who is checking the account? A nonexistent gain can easily be claimed since garbage is usually burned with the ‘help’ of NG or coal.
Garbage emits whatever volatiles are present, and anything can be in there. It emits most air pollutants at many times the rate for coal, not to mention, ‘clean‘ coal. Mercury emission, from GTE plants in New York, is known to be as much as six times higher than coal.
Pity the poor people living near a GTE plant. Bad smells, bad air, bad health and no one is on their side.