California Sues ExxonMobil For Alleged Decades of Deception Around Plastic Recycling (cnn.com) 129
An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: California Attorney General Rob Bonta filed a lawsuit against ExxonMobil on Monday alleging the company carried out a "decades-long campaign of deception" in which the oil and gas giant misled the public on the merits of plastic recycling. The complaint accuses the company of using slick marketing and misleading public statements for half a century to claim recycling was an effective way to deal with plastic pollution, according to a press release from Bonta's office published Monday. It alleges the company continues to perpetuate the "myth" of recycling today. The case, filed in the San Francisco County Superior Court, seeks to compel ExxonMobil "to end its deceptive practices that threaten the environment and the public," the statement said.
Bonta is also asking the court to rule ExxonMobil must pay civil penalties, among other payments, for the harm inflicted by plastic pollution in California. "Plastics are everywhere, from the deepest parts of our oceans, the highest peaks on earth, and even in our bodies, causing irreversible damage -- in ways known and unknown -- to our environment and potentially our health," Bonta said. "For decades, ExxonMobil has been deceiving the public to convince us that plastic recycling could solve the plastic waste and pollution crisis when they clearly knew this wasn't possible. ExxonMobil lied to further its record-breaking profits at the expense of our planet and possibly jeopardizing our health," he said. [...]
Lawsuits against oil and gas companies for their role in climate change and air pollution are becoming more common, but Monday's is the first in the country to take on a fossil fuel company for its messaging around plastic recycling. The statement said that ExxonMobil "falsely promoted all plastic as recyclable, when in fact the vast majority of plastic products are not and likely cannot be recycled, either technically or economically." The lawsuit also alleges Exxon "continues to deceive the public by touting "advanced recycling" as the solution to the plastic waste and pollution crisis." Advanced -- or chemical -- recycling is a technology promoted by many oil companies, but which has been plagued by missed targets, closed or shelved plants and reports of fires and spills. [...] At the heart of the suit is the allegation ExxonMobil's messaging caused consumers to buy and use more single-use plastic than they otherwise would have. In response to the lawsuit, ExxonMobil pointed the finger back at California, which it said has an ineffective recycling system that officials have known about for decades: "They failed to act, and now they seek to blame others. Instead of suing us, they could have worked with us to fix the problem and keep plastic out of landfills."
ExxonMobil contends chemical recycling does work. "We're bringing real solutions, recycling plastic waste that couldn't be recycled by traditional methods," the company said in a statement.
A copy of the Attorney General's complaint can be found here (PDF).
Bonta is also asking the court to rule ExxonMobil must pay civil penalties, among other payments, for the harm inflicted by plastic pollution in California. "Plastics are everywhere, from the deepest parts of our oceans, the highest peaks on earth, and even in our bodies, causing irreversible damage -- in ways known and unknown -- to our environment and potentially our health," Bonta said. "For decades, ExxonMobil has been deceiving the public to convince us that plastic recycling could solve the plastic waste and pollution crisis when they clearly knew this wasn't possible. ExxonMobil lied to further its record-breaking profits at the expense of our planet and possibly jeopardizing our health," he said. [...]
Lawsuits against oil and gas companies for their role in climate change and air pollution are becoming more common, but Monday's is the first in the country to take on a fossil fuel company for its messaging around plastic recycling. The statement said that ExxonMobil "falsely promoted all plastic as recyclable, when in fact the vast majority of plastic products are not and likely cannot be recycled, either technically or economically." The lawsuit also alleges Exxon "continues to deceive the public by touting "advanced recycling" as the solution to the plastic waste and pollution crisis." Advanced -- or chemical -- recycling is a technology promoted by many oil companies, but which has been plagued by missed targets, closed or shelved plants and reports of fires and spills. [...] At the heart of the suit is the allegation ExxonMobil's messaging caused consumers to buy and use more single-use plastic than they otherwise would have. In response to the lawsuit, ExxonMobil pointed the finger back at California, which it said has an ineffective recycling system that officials have known about for decades: "They failed to act, and now they seek to blame others. Instead of suing us, they could have worked with us to fix the problem and keep plastic out of landfills."
ExxonMobil contends chemical recycling does work. "We're bringing real solutions, recycling plastic waste that couldn't be recycled by traditional methods," the company said in a statement.
A copy of the Attorney General's complaint can be found here (PDF).
OK. So now it's out in the open (Score:5, Insightful)
We know plastic can't be recycled economically. We know plastic manufacturers have been engaging in PR campaigns to deceive us into thinking recycling was the answer. Now they're blaming us for not catching on faster.
Somewhere there must be a wall we can line the execs up against before we shoot them.
Barring that, there are trillions and trillions of dollars needed to clean up the mess and trillions more needed to wean us off plastics. We need to be taxing that stuff at the source starting about 1970, collecting sufficient funds to cover collecting used plastic and heating it until the atoms that make it are separated from each other, then collecting the separated elements. Plus a bit more to cover the cost of cleaning up environmental plastic that we've just been dumping on the planet for decades. ...and a tiny bit more to fund a nice wall and some bullets.
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In Europe it seems to be economically :)
Depends what plastic we are talking about.
There are basically three kinds of plastics:
A) duroplast, that is hard plastic like e.g. wall sockets or light switches - those can not be recycled by smelting
B) thermoplasts, can easily be smelted and reused/recycled - e.g soda bottles, plastic bags
C) elastomers, they are similar to B) but I forgot the exact difference. They can also be recycled by simply smelting and reforming.
In Europe plastic recycling is mandatory. Plasti
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Plastic recycling in EU takes fundamentally three forms.
The only actually functional one is PET bottle recycling.
The much pushed by your types general plastics recycling. It's a crime against environment, as it burns extreme amount of energy and still results in much if not most of it being shipping abroad for separation, never coming back because no one actually separates it. It's just land filled.
Finally the actually correct way of recycling general plastics, burning them for energy and heat in place of f
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Every time PET is recycled, the polymer chains that compose it break, creating shorter chains and a more brittle, less useful resin. Thermal PET recycling just delays land-filling – it is not closed loop. The only way to completely recover the material is through chemical recycling, that is, breaking the polymer down into monomer feed stock and creating a fresh PET resin. Ultimately you are going to have to go through that energy intensive chemical recycling process, otherwise you are just introduc
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Everything else, including recycling pre-sorted PET bottles is ultimately more expensive.
And this expense should be included up front in the price of plastic and carefully kept with the manufacturers. If you recycle it, you've recovered your investment, if not, you lose.
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That would financially annihilate the poor, who are the ones that suffer the most from things like hygiene problems with food.
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Dioxins are highly toxic compounds that pose significant risks to human health and the environment. Burning plastics is a major source of dioxin emissions, contributing to their presence in the environment.
Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/... [sciencedirect.com]
Dioxins are extremely toxic & persistent compounds, for example in the USA: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Another reminder that I'm that asshole that actually reads the source material. From your study:
>Studies indicate that dioxins are formed below 800C but are degraded by 99.99% at 1000C
Most of the modern incinerators burn above 1k for that exact reason.
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You sure? Wasn't it more of a matter of us demanding recycling, them telling us it can't be done and we going "...or ELSE!" in their face?
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...he said, certainly posting from a device that wouldn't exist without plastics.
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Somewhere there must be a wall we can line the execs up against before we shoot them.
Why damage and soil a perfectly good wall? Back them up to the edges of excavations for windmill towers, shoot'em, and start pouring the concrete. Minimal cleanup, and they can be 'foundational' in efforts to undo the damage they've wrought.
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The people you want to shoot are already long dead. Everyone involved now has just inherited this problem. Nobody alive actually caused it.
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Somewhere there must be a wall we can line the execs up against before we shoot them.
There was supposed to be, but Mexico refused to pay for it. ;)
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My house has a few walls, I would be most happy to loan them out for this.
Re:OK. So now it's out in the open (Score:4, Informative)
Disclaimer: I make a living in the plastics recycling industry.
"falsely promoted all plastic as recyclable, when in fact the vast majority of plastic products are not and likely cannot be recycled, either technically or economically."
This statement is just plain false. The vast majority of plastics can be recycled technically, and the question is not "can we do it?" but, "is there a market for it?" At the most basic chemistry level, plastics can be broken down into their constituent elements, but in most cases, it isn't even necessary to depolymerize the molecules. PET, HDPE, LDPE, and polypropylene are all being recycled today, with healthy markets supporting them.
Furthermore, the reasons why many plastics aren't recycled isn't because of the oil industry, but because of economic and political factors such as:
Local communities (mine included) deliberately limit recycling efforts by restricting the size or pickup dates for recyclable materials. For example, my community only picks up recycling every other week, while collecting garbage every week. Naturally, if the recycling bin is full, the remainder goes in the garbage.
The reason more plastic isn't recycled has nothing to do with the oil companies, and everything to do with the choices made by politicians and individual consumers.
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Plus, didn't /. just have an article yesterday about a newer, better plastic recycling process?
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Nice try, ExxonMobil.
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When someone asks, "Is this product recyclable?" they are not asking, "Is there any known physical process, no matter how expensive or impractical, by which it could theoretical be recycled?" That isn't what the word means to most people. Here is what they are actually asking. "If I put it in my recycling bin, will it get recycled?" If the answer is no, then it's not recyclable.
That means a product might be recyclable in some places and not in others. But usually it doesn't matter. Most plastic produc
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Let me put it more succinctly: Any city with a population of more than half a million people could build a recycling facility that would recycle most of the plastics used in consumer packaging. And my company would gladly build that facility for you - we have turnkey solutions available right now. Most of the consumer items with the recycling symbol on them can be recycled by a modern facility. Whether they choose to recycle the plastics, or send them to a landfill is a question of economics and politic
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You know what fixes the problem? Taxing at the point of manufacture to cover the recycling, with a rebate when the product is recycled.
Anything less means an economic advantage to polluters.
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Which would make a bit more sense than suing not the maker of plastic products, nor the vendor, but the supplier of raw materials.
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Everything from single use needles packed into plastic that all but eliminated spread of infection
Let me quote you on that (with correction):
The usual method of right wing disinformation at play, post an minor exception to the massive rule that has been already agreed upon, and paint it as covering the entire subject which it obviously doesn't.
This is not misinformation and the anti-humans are those who feed us microplastics and wrap electronics and other products in five layers of different types of plastics and so on.
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So we have:
"Right wing wraps things in multiple layers of plastics, and (somehow) enabled microplastics (nevermind that biggest source of them is Communist China)".
Meanwhile left wing is "bring back massive amounts of food poisoning, infections from reusable needles".
The fact that you see this as a "evil right wing, wonderful left wing" tells us nothing about either of those political beliefs. But it tells a lot about you.
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This is probably the most damaging misinformation to date to come from anti-human doomer camp. Plastics are what enabled modern human prosperity. Everything from single use needles packed into plastic that all but eliminated spread of infection through reusable needles to massive reduction in food poisoning, to comfortable and cheap clothing to everything else plastics related.
But because it enables human flourishing to such an extreme degree, it's a priority to destroy for those that believe that humans are a plague upon the earth, the rapists of Mother Gaia and are destroying the planet. Typical talking point you'll find in literature of this particular pseudo-scientific cult is "stabilization of the poor and the working class".
Which prevents them from developing Critical Consciousness which is necessary to become a revolutionary.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!
And you forgot to mark it as humour. Poe's law says you might get some people who take this seriously!
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It's easy to tell a decadent leftist Westerner. They think things like wide scale food poisoning from food spoilage and infections from multi-use needles are funny stuff.
Because they live in nations where those weren't a problem for their for their entire decadent lives. Because they lived with plastic packaging that enabled near total elimination of those things throughout their lived memory.
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Reasonable person: Its makes for very powerful fires, we should not keep liquid O2 near open flames. Also, ozone is bad to breath, we should not create it in places humans are.
Dumb ass like parent: Oh so how are you going even have any flames? all flames need oxygen! Stupid liberal !!1111 I thought the ozone layer was a good thing! Give me back my hairspray!
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I'm sure that analogy made sense in your head, but would you like to attempt to project that analogy on the subject? Because all I see is weird ass attempt to paint someone who actually observes reality as it is in emotionally negative light, and then invoke claims of stupidity. Which is quite ironic considering how little curiosity "current thing" pundits have. I don't think you're even aware as you keep babbling about evil plastics today, that your analogues just a few decades ago used to babble about evi
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I see, and you smoke cigarettes, and don't believe in cancer.
I'm good with this (Score:3, Interesting)
Exxon, Chevron, and the majors should all clean things up. Stop selling oil, gasoline, diesel and oil products in California in 30 days.
It will help California to not collect the 60 cents of state-level gasoline tax per gallon https://www.nbcsandiego.com/ne... [nbcsandiego.com]
It will also help California not collect the $7+ billion in gasoline taxes each year. https://advocacy.calchamber.co... [calchamber.com]
This is the same thing that Puerto Rico tried a while back to get a never-ending tax/penalty revenue stream from the oil companies, just like the big tobacco settlement did 20 (?) years ago in the USA.
I'm good with the oil majors pulling out of California. At some point they will pull out of a state that a) wants the tax money / sin tax money, and b) wants a political campaign - oil is evil, and c) wants to provide work for an army of government bureaucrat regulators and safety inspectors
Question is when (Score:2)
When will the amount of regulation and industry targeting by the government will seriously break a fundamental part of the economy.
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Because companies can be trusted to always do the right thing?
Like Union Carbide? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
If regulation is hampering your business then feel free to relocate to some place with less regulation. Haiti fits the bill nicely. No functioning government to interfere with honest businessmen.
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Nah man! The penchant for cannibalism ensures an extensive stock of "long pork"
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Sometime after that fundamental part of the economy poisons most of humanity?
Re:I'm good with this (Score:5, Informative)
This is the same thing that Puerto Rico tried a while back to get a never-ending tax/penalty revenue stream from the oil companies, just like the big tobacco settlement did 20 (?) years ago in the USA.
What dumb shit conservative talking point is this? You want to know why big tobacco settled? It's very simple actually.
Here is video of tobacco executives in court and under oath saying nicotine is not addictive. https://senate.ucsf.edu/tobacc... [ucsf.edu]
That's why they had to pay billions of dollars. Not that big government is picking on the poor little tobacco companies. Because they claimed for years their products were safe and non addictive and slowly poisoned people.
Honestly, the best thing that could ever happen in the world now is telling the middle east we no longer need their product.
Same solution to get at the money (Score:2)
The tobacco settlement established that a large number of attorneys + state governments could take on and win a multi-decade revenue stream from a very large industry.
These more modern attempts, while not having the same evidence of harm as tobacco, are just modern attempts to get the multi-decade revenue stream paid from a very large industry to state governments.
It's not left, right or center politically. It's not a defense of oil industry and plastics. It's about how to find a workable solution which do
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There's a large group of people that when shown attorneys on one side of the room, and tobacco execs on the other side, will claim the attorneys are the most evil despite the tobacco execs having the actual massive body count.
Re:I'm good with this (Score:5, Informative)
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Don't forget the lead industry pulled the same nonsense in claiming their product was safe and tried to railroad critics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Yes, as much as "the greatest generation" gave us, they also knowingly poisoned their children.
And so it goes...
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Honestly, the best thing that could ever happen in the world now is telling the middle east we no longer need their product.
That would be a good idea if you could actually do it. As far as the OP's point is a conservative talking point, it's not actually wrong. Gasoline taxes make up a huge amount of a state budget, so much so that new taxes are being invented for the advent of largescale EV adoption.
But before we even talk about budgets, let's talk about life itself. Let's cut off oil and gas. Now I'll leave it up to you to stand in front of the angry people who can't heat their homes, can't make their cars go, and can't keep t
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We're in a quandary. All these inexpensive fuels have not just fueled a growth in pollutants, they have fueled a growth in population. We have an exponentially growing population which is supported by oil. This is primarily because of the creation of synthentic fertilizers which needs a lot of energy, and those fertilizers make it possible to feed the large human population. Today one could swap to renewables for the power, relaxing the need to always be nice to the Saudis. But cheap oil also led to oth
Circling back (Score:2)
More generically restating this:
1) How can we get from here to there in terms of energy production, consumption, environment, jobs, economy, quality of life, education, etc.?
2) Having a bunch of politicians / regulators go after companies in and around election time to 'look tough', 'get reelected', 'align themselves for the next political office' seems to not be working.
3) How can we have a left, right and center of the political spectrum a reasoned discussion of priorities, how to rank the priorities, how
Exxon Valdeze (Score:5, Interesting)
After the Exxon Valdeze 1989 oil spill ecological disaster, Exxon and the major oil companies sold all of their transport ships, transport barges (to Kirby corp), etc. to other companies to get out of the liability of transporting crude oil.
Expect something similar to happen with California where the oil majors essentially will have no assets in California to sue, no money in California and gasoline sold to middlemen who then sell it in California and the middlemen are incorporated outside the USA.
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Mr. Exxon, is that you?
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That's Captain Hazelwood to you, Mister!
Brought out the knee-jerk responses (Score:3)
Simply pointing out California's at opposition objectives of collecting tax revenue from oil companies and demonizing the oil companies brought out the knee-jerk responses.
Yes. Bhopal Union Carbide is another example, lead paint / lead in gasoline another, Love Canal another, open pits for storing oil and chemicals another, testing chemical wearpons just outside Washington DC for WWI (now covered over by houses) is another, dumping tires and batteries off Florida coast another, teflon production turning roc
Re:Brought out the knee-jerk responses (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually oil companies are demons. They don't need anyone to demonize them, just someone to reveal what they are really doing.
The prototype of demon corporations were the tobacco companies. They sold a product that was addictive and killed people and they knew it. Then they lied to everyone, employed bogus science, bought legislation and legislators, and covered up their crimes. When there was finally a reckoning those responsible essentially got away with it. They kept their billions of dollars and victims were never given adequate compensation. The only positive result was that people mostly stopped smoking so there were fewer new victims. The Sackler family did the same thing with Oxycontin and so far they seem to be getting away with it too.
The oil/fossil energy companies use identical tactics to the old tobacco companies and they continue to work. Fossil energy kills a lot of people outright and makes huge profits. However there is one critical difference; fossil energy is destroying the entire ecosystem, not just destroying individuals. Without a viable environment the lack of new victims will be due to everyone being dead, which seems like a really bad outcome.
At this point it's very clear that there are viable replacements for fossil energy using renewables. Like tobacco, fossil energy is addictive and hard to quit, but not quitting is the path to death/extinction. It's far beyond the fate of any single individual or institution.
Plastic recycling is just a microcosm of the larger much more terrifying problem. As long as those who are getting rich by using the old tricks continue to get away with it the future looks bleak for everyone.
So yes, they are demons, and they seek destruction and they seem to be succeeding.
Re: Brought out the knee-jerk responses (Score:2, Troll)
Give up all of your usage of oil, including what you already have, starting today. I'd say come back and tell us what it's like in a month, but you won't have access to anything and you'll be dead unless you're skilled at hunting and gathering and using a bow and arrow. Go Watch Naked and Afraid to get some idea of what life is like without oil. Then go read the article on science.org about how cleaning up ship fuel may have royally f'd us.
Modern civilization is built on oil. Plastic recycling happens today
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How about instead we make the oil companies help us transition away from oil? Seems fair, since they made massive profits off these lies.
They can do it willingly and set themselves up to have a viable renewables and recycling business, or we can just use lawsuits to extract the money and they get nothing in return.
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Can't go hunting and gathering in most parts of the world; unless you have your own private land for it. Can't hunt on public lands most places, so you end up poaching instead. Absolutely there is not enough land for everyone to go this route, we'd have to go back to an 1800s level of population for that.
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The responses are literally littered throughout these postings. Yes, eventually, there is no point in reposting the same answers to your provocative questions.
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So yes, they are demons, and they seek destruction and they seem to be succeeding.
You act as if most people wouldn't make the same choice regarding easy money. Something does need to be done, but invoking demonology is not going to keep things rational.
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When your mansion is paid for through dubious actions, then it's no surprise that the execs will put their morality aside and do whatever it takes to keep the money flowing. Absolute power and all.
But they're also real people, who were presumably raised with a set of normal values. Which leads to the snag: cognitive dissonance, A part of them is making money by doing evil, the other part of them has proper humane values, and so the opposition of those two ideas in one brain will struggle to make sense of
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It's all stuff that's been well-known but not well publicised for a while. For it to go on the legal record is a step towards actually doing something about it at a systemic level. Like when the lying the US tobacco industry were engaged in was exposed in a court case in the 1980s, & it led to increasingly stronger & more effective systematic regulations aimed at reducing tobacco co
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Sure. They've been doing this since the nineties at least...f'rinstance I worked at a firm that was created so that Shell & Arco could leave Ca. (I think it was those two, their web page won't admit its origins any more)
There always seem to be a new bidder when companies bail.
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>> Stop selling oil, gasoline, diesel and oil products
The issue is obviously about plastic pollution, which has nothing to do with anything you said.
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>> Plastic is primarily derived from fossil fuels
That's entirely unrelated to the article, which is about a "decades-long campaign of deception" in which the oil and gas giant misled the public on the merits of plastic recycling. It is odd that you are so desperate to deflect this.
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Yep! Destroy the local economy.
Then point and laugh as the the state disappears up its own asshole while the Commie Kleptocrats dismantle the state down to the bedrock and begin promptly eating one another!
It couldn't happen to nicer folk!
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Commie Kleptocrats
You mistyped "corporate fascists".
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Their medications are probably packaged in plastic, like most medications are. Wouldn't that just make the problem worse?
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No longer a conspiracy theory (Score:4, Interesting)
Ten years ago, if you claimed plastic recycling was an oil industry hoax, you would have been called a nut. A recycling and climate change denier. Now, totally mainstream consensus opinion.
Re:No longer a conspiracy theory (Score:5, Insightful)
Plastics industry executive came out ~5 years, conveniently at/after retiring, saying that the entire 1980s plastic recycling and labeling different grades of plastic for recycling was an advertising PR move since there was no viable way to recycle large amounts of plastic.
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The oil companies are notorious liars. https://www.wired.com/2013/01/... [wired.com]
I noticed how you smuggled in (Score:1)
That assumes you explained your reasoning. Those plastic recycling plants have been shipping the refuge overseas for a very very long time and it wouldn't have been that hard to get a hold of that information. A lot of those companies would be big enough to be publicly traded and the information would have been public. The only reason this did
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Of course you would be. Climate change denier is an umbrella term for the political left in the West to tarnish opposition of any of their purportedly environmental policies.
That hasn't changed. You will still get called that for observing reality that doesn't line up with the dogma. For example, observing that more CO2 in the atmosphere has massively increased crop yields, so fearmongering about starvation that was so common for climate change activists during 2000s was a bold faced lie. Does that say anyt
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CO2 isn't usually the rate-limiting step for plant growth in nature. Unless you're running a commercial hydroponic farm, and can provide effectively infinite nutrients and light.
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Not sure what "usually" means other than "ignore everything afterwards". We know for a fact that megaflora is largely gone because of CO2 starvation event that is currently ongoing.
It's why we push it to optimal numbers for chlorophyll that is around 1200-1500ppm CO2 in greenhouses, and get much larger produce even from plants that are evolved to deal with CO2 starvation that have displaced plants that were evolved for the optimal CO2 numbers tens of millions of years ago.
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Ten years ago, if you claimed plastic recycling was an oil industry hoax, you would have been called a nut. A recycling and climate change denier. Now, totally mainstream consensus opinion.
The problem is labelling something concept. Plastic recycling isn't a hoax, it is something that we can objectively do, in fact we have multiple different processes to do it, and we do so in some capacity on an industrial scale already (the coke I'm drinking right now is in a 100% recycled plastic bottle).
The issue is economics. It's expensive, no one wants to pay for it. That doesn't make it a hoax. That doesn't mean plastic isn't recyclable. It just means the idea doesn't suit our never ending desire to r
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We've acknowledged it's bullshit. Now what? (Score:3)
So we admit that recycling is bullshit, as if many of us hadn't figured that out quite some time ago. So, now what? We can go back to glass bottles instead of plastic ones, sure, and the soda companies and others will cry and whine about the cost of handling them. We still use aluminum cans for things -- but aren't they plastic lined? Plastic wrap keeps many perishables, like meat, from getting contaminated, and from leaking all over the place; do we go back to paper and put up with the problems that presents?
Basically: what are the alternatives for everything using plastics in single-use scenarios? Or are plant-based plastics, that are biodegradable, acceptable substitutes, or are there downsides to them that are deal-breakers?
I know this is a big subject, and I think this is one of the places where it can begin to be discussed. Like with so many things, we can't keep doing things the same way anymore.
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Or are plant-based plastics, that are biodegradable, acceptable substitutes, or are there downsides to them that are deal-breakers?
The useful plant-based plastics sold as biodegradable don't actually break down much faster than petrol plastic.
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There are no alternatives, and single use plastics are what enabled massive advances in things like general hygiene. Remind yourself how common food poisoning was from store bought food compared to today when things are packaged in single use plastics. How big of a problem infection from reused hypodermic needles, before sterile single use plastic packaging of single use needles became a norm. There are countless examples of this.
It's why this plastics neuroticism doesn't exist outside the most decadent of
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There are lots of instances where we use plastics where we don't need to though. I don't need a plastic window in my box of spaghetti to see the product. I know what it looks like and it has a picture on the box anyways. Do away with those across the board. Do serial and crackers really need a plastic bag inside the box? An oiled or waxed paper bag works about as well (yes I know the wax is probably paraffin, but it is still less hydrocarbons). Stuff from the bakery doesn't need to come in a plastic cl
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You can tell the level of decadence of people in question because this is obviously the first time they stop to actually think *why* single use plastics are bad in thigs like food packaging, and the results are utterly hilarious. You get things like:
>An oiled or waxed paper bag works about as well
Nevermind how much easier it is to cause product loss or spoilage by tearing paper compared to plastic.
>I don't need a plastic window in my box of spaghetti to see the product. I know what it looks like and i
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There are no alternatives, and single use plastics are what enabled massive advances in things like general hygiene
I understand that. But the shit is now everywhere and in fucking everything and it's fucking everything up. It's not sustainable.
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What is it fucking up exactly? Be specific. The sole meaningful problem we're having with them so far that I'm aware of is that we don't have good enough trash collection and burning systems in poor countries, so they end up in waterways in poor countries in too high numbers. Everything else is "something that is happening that doesn't really concern humanity in any meaningful way beyond marketing headlines to sell you (on) things".
No, poor turtle choking on a plastic bag in the middle of Pacific doesn't im
Re: (Score:2)
>We must dramatically reduce our use of single use plastics
Non-decadent world already disagreed with this nonsense. All developing nations are massively accelerating adoption of single use plastics, and massive increases in quality of life it brings. They thoroughly rejected (note past tense) your world view, because they do not enjoy the level of decadence you do.
Re: (Score:2)
>Food poisoning from store bought food almost never happens
In the wealthy nations. Go to Asian nations that are too poor to adopt single use plastic packaging for food, and it's a norm. You get it several times a year even after you adapt to local hygiene levels.
The reason you only worry about it coming from the factory in the West is because single use plastic prevents ingress of foreign bacteria after it leaves the factory.
Re:We've acknowledged it's bullshit. Now what? (Score:5, Insightful)
A stupidly simple method is to just put a tax on it. This will encourage switching to an alternative if possible, but still allow use of the thing when needed. The examples you listed would probably be among the last to go, but maybe they'd decide we don't need to have everything in clamshell packaging shipped in a giant cube of styrofoam.
Or we could ban plastic straws, to punish people for complaining while accomplishing nothing.
Re: (Score:2)
Penn and Teller did a documentary on their BS show showing that plastic recycling was BS all the way back in 2004. It was on Showtime, you might be able to find a copy of it somewhere. I'm curious why the rest of the world took so long to notice?
\o/ (Score:1)
Stage Left:
* The world's most expensive legal team prepares to present evidence that true === false
Dear ExxonMobile (Score:2)
Please stop selling your products in California.
It's NOT FAIR (Score:2)
To exxcoriate a company for executing on its core competency!
God, the US idiocy (Score:2)
First of all, we know that plastic can be recycled. It's done in the EU. We also know that it's cheaper to use non-recycled plastic, so there's need for laws to help the cycle work. We also know that not all plastics can be recycled, so there's need for laws that force using recyclable plastics. And sure, according to stats online only about 40% of plastic is recycled in the EU, but that's about 40% more than in the US.
So what is the US doing? Gives up. What does this lawsuit achieve? Absolutely nothing. Is
Re:God, the US idiocy (Score:5, Informative)
>It's done in the EU
It is not done in EU. We have fundamentally three modes of plastic recycling. From smallest to largest:
PET bottles. Well identified plastic type, with specific cleanliness level, presorted, etc. The only plastic that is actually recycled.
General plastics. Everything else. There are bins for it now due to regulation. It is not actually recycled to any meaningful degree beyond sloganeering. Most of it goes down three paths: local landfill, export for "sorting" actually going to foreign landfill (this is why it was a massive crisis when certain Asian countries banned import of general plastics) and finally the main form of actually handling general plastic garbage that actually works.
Burning it in place of fossil fuels.
The problem is that activists are trying to reduce the last one in favor of the one in the middle. Which is leading to massive problems for the environment.
Re: (Score:2)
To quote from an article:
"According to the latest statistics, 35% of post-consumer plastic waste went to recycling, 42% to energy recovery and 23% to landfill in 2020"
I'd be interested in some links to some proof to what you're saying, because when I search I don't find that. I find things like the quote I posted above. Which basically says that things work reasonably well in the EU.
Re: (Score:2)
Notice that they don't detail what "plastics recycling" entails. You will find a lot of self-congratulatory marketing from the likes of EU parliament, like these:
https://www.europarl.europa.eu... [europa.eu]
Notice that they never clarify what "recycling" entails. It's never counted. But what we do know is that every time a new nation that used to be target of "sorting services for plastic recycling" bans imports of dirty plastics, we get massive pileups of "plastics to be recycled" until new deals are signed with anoth
What's the alternative? (Score:2)
Let's say we need to package a wet sandwich and make it last a week on its way to a customer without the container suffering any level of decomposition. If not plastics, then what? It's easy to point the finger. It's not easy to find VIABLE alternatives. Perhaps there should be a rule that you are not allowed to suggest phasing out plastics unless you offer a viable replacement advice in return.
Re: (Score:2)
Stop trying to ship around so many disgusting, week-old sandwiches? Have the ingredients on hand and make the sandwich when you want to eat it. Yes some plastic use continues to be necessary for sanitary reasons or because it's the only way to ship certain things, but we can definitely cut down on a lot of purely cosmetic packaging. Maybe we also have to accept a little less convenience packaging and make our own sandwiches more often. People got by before bringing a lunch pail to work.
Re: What's the alternative? (Score:2)
That's often how long it takes for many products to reach shelves. Sandwiches are just an example.
Re: What's the alternative? (Score:2)
Have you read the article at all? The argument is that plastic cannot be effectively dealt with therefore levies, taxes and recycling are just a decoy for the inconvenient truth. Ergo, go tax yourself or offer an alternative solution.
So ... (Score:2)
... it's Exxon's fault that various governments have been making us sort plastics and pay to have them supposedly recycled, instead of just more safely putting them in the ground?
I don't think it was Exxon who was gonna send around the guys with guns if I didn't comply.
Re:So ... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, that's the interesting thing about this. California has known that recycling plastic doesn't work for years now, yet they still require their citizens to do it.
Does that means that California residents should sue the state for their part in perpetuating the lie?
Suing for unknown damage? (Score:2)
Lying to liars who want to be lied to (Score:2)
The public lied when they said they wanted plastic to be recycled. The public wanted to be lied to so they could feel good about themselves. Politicians went along with the lie because a small vocal minority could be placated by pretending to be environmentally concerned without spending very much. There has never been any evidence that most plastic was being recycled. Engineers where telling us in the 80s
Re: (Score:2)
Yup. They were deceived because they wanted to be. They wanted to think this would make their waste better. I can't even complain too much as I bought it initially too. But as I looked into it, I realized it was 99% BS. Some recycling happens, only the most profitable though. Metals often are, fair bit of paper, but plastic? Not so much. It could be, at least some of it, but it's too expensive to do compared to fresh material. I am required by my city to have and pay for a recycling bin, so I do try to at l