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Episode:
51
Recycling: One of the Greatest Environmental Myths of All Time
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Today, I want to talk about one of the greatest environmental myths ever: recycling.
When I say myth, I should probably say scam. We’ve been told that if we just recycle, we can solve the plastic crisis. But is that really true, or just a greenwashed lie designed to shift blame away from those responsible? Spoiler: it’s the latter.
If you’ve been listening to this podcast for a while, you’ll know how much I despise the way recycling has been used to deceive the public - but you might not know all the details.
So in this episode, we’re getting into the history and facts behind recycling.
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Transcript
Kia ora kaitiaki, and welcome to Now That's What I Call Green.
I'm your host, Brianne West — an environmentalist and entrepreneur trying to get you as excited about our planet as I am. I'm all about applying a scientific approach to making the world a better place, without the judgment, and making it fun. And of course, we’ll be chatting about some of the most amazing creatures we share our planet with.
So, if you're looking to navigate through everything green (or not-so-green), you've come to the right place.
Kia ora and welcome back.
Now That's What I Call Green is all about science, optimism, and action — and I think we could all do with a bit more of that.
Today, I want to talk about one of the biggest environmental myths ever. Yep, recycling.
And when I say myth, I probably should say scam, because for decades, we've been told that if we just separate our plastics into the right bin, wash them out properly, and cross our fingers, we can fix this plastic crisis.
But is that actually true? Or have we all been fed a giant greenwashing lie, designed to shift blame away from the corporations profiting from producing billions of tonnes of plastic every year?
Spoiler alert:
It's the second one.
Recycling has a much longer — and probably more complicated — history than most of us realise. While it’s great in theory and definitely better than a poke with a stick, it’s often used as a smokescreen by industries that don’t want to change. And in fact, they’re doubling down on making even more plastic.
Today, I want to talk about where recycling came from, how corporations cleverly pushed this responsibility onto us, and what we can actually do to solve the plastic crisis — which, of course, is exactly what you know because we’ve talked about it a million times before.
Recycling isn’t new. Humans have been repurposing materials for thousands of years, but the reasons have changed over time.
In ancient times, it was a necessity. Archaeologists have found evidence that the Romans melted down bronze coins to make statues and weapons. During Japan's Edo period, paper, metals, and textiles were routinely recycled because the materials were expensive. Even in 19th-century Europe, rags were collected to make paper, and scavengers picked through rubbish heaps looking for reusable items.
Fast forward to World War II, and recycling became a patriotic duty. Governments encouraged citizens to donate metal, rubber, and paper to support the war effort. This was genuine recycling because these materials were remade into things that were actually used for the war.
Citizens were given quotas for metal and rubber collection. Campaigns urged families to save things like aluminium, tin, and even cooking fat to be repurposed into explosives and machinery. This suggests a stronger social contract than we have now. Newspapers and radio reinforced the message that recycling was an essential part of supporting the war effort.
At that time, recycling made sense because resources were limited, and recycling was directly linked to survival.
But after the war, consumer culture exploded. Factories that had been producing war materials pivoted to making consumer goods, and corporations needed people to buy, use, and then throw away things at an ever-increasing rate. This gave rise to the concept of planned obsolescence — designing products to break down or go out of style quickly (hello, fashion!).
Companies like General Motors and DuPont deliberately designed products to wear out, ensuring constant demand and consumption. The disposable culture was born, and single-use plastic took over.
In the 1950s, plastic production boomed. Companies like Dow, Exxon, and DuPont made fortunes off cheap, disposable plastic. Very quickly, plastic became the dominant material for almost everything — from packaging to furniture.
Between 1950 and 1970, global plastic production skyrocketed from 1.5 million tonnes to nearly 50 million tonnes. Plastic was marketed as a miracle material — cheap, lightweight, and infinitely versatile. And they weren’t wrong. Plastic is one of the most incredible materials on Earth. But that’s also what makes it so bad.
Plastic enabled mass production at an unprecedented scale, and every industry jumped on board — from food packaging to fashion. And as you've heard me talk about before, that was one of the worst decisions ever, because a huge chunk of microplastics in our environment comes from plastic fashion.
Eventually, people started noticing that plastic waste was piling up and not going anywhere. Unlike glass, which eventually wears down into sand, plastic breaks up into smaller and smaller pieces — but it never disappears. Those microplastics are a massive problem. (I’ve got a whole other episode about them if you want to know more.)
Scientists started raising concerns about the long-term impacts of plastic waste as early as the 1960s. But like with climate change, we’ve done sod all about it. Research showed that plastic waste was washing up on beaches, clogging waterways, and even showing up in the stomachs of marine animals.
People started demanding action from governments and companies. But the plastic industry saw this as a problem. If people saw plastic as an environmental disaster, they’d demand bans or restrictions. So, they came up with a genius strategy: blame the consumer.
Sound familiar?
Instead of focusing on the sheer scale of plastic production, the intense marketing, and the greenwashing, the narrative shifted to personal responsibility. The message was clear:
It's not plastic that's the issue — it's the way you dispose of it. If you just recycle properly, the problem will be solved.
This idea is a lot like saying, "Guns don't kill people, people do." Sure, technically true, but it misses the point entirely.
This was the beginning of one of the biggest greenwashing campaigns in history — and it worked.
Even today, if you criticise recycling, people get quite sassy about it. There’s this belief that if you question recycling, you're going to put people off doing it and make things worse. And sure, that’s a valid concern. But we need to be able to criticise a system that doesn’t work well at all.
Over the next few decades, corporations convinced governments, media, and the public that recycling was the key to solving the crisis. But as we know, the reality is far more complicated.
Recycling was never designed to keep up with the sheer volume of plastic being produced. Most plastic items have always been difficult or impossible to recycle efficiently — and the oil companies behind this knew that. But the myth of recycling persists.
Corporations are gearing up to produce 30% more plastic by 2030, and every year, we, the consumers, are left to deal with the consequences. And those consequences are getting pretty scary.
But the greenwashing story is fascinating. It's interesting to see how propaganda really does infect people — and I use the word infect on purpose.
In the 1970s, environmental awareness was on the rise. It was low-level compared to now, but it was definitely growing. The first Earth Day in 1970 brought pollution and waste into public consciousness.
The plastics industry saw this as a massive threat. If the public turned against plastic, they wouldn’t make as much money. So, an industry lobbying group called the Society of the Plastics Industry (SPI), which represented companies like Exxon, Dow Chemical, and DuPont (because of course), launched one of the most misleading campaigns ever.
One of their biggest victories was the introduction of the arrow recycling symbol — the one with the three arrows in a triangle.
Most people assume that little triangle with the numbers one through seven means that something is recyclable. It doesn’t.
The Society of the Plastics Industry (SPI) designed the symbols not to indicate recyclability but to categorise different types of plastic resins.
This might sound pedantic, but it’s critical. Most plastic items stamped with that symbol were never recyclable. Internal documents from the industry show that they knew this.
A 1989 SPI memo even acknowledged that the public recycling push was just a way of forestalling mandatory bans on plastic.
At what point do you just feel like you're going mad? You can’t fathom that there are people who continuously put money before everything else.
And when I say things like this, people get all uppity and say, "Oh, you're just a communist or a socialist."
Spoiler alert: I’m not.
I’m a businesswoman. I launched, ran, and sold a very successful company. I’m starting another one. I absolutely believe in employee ownership. But I’m certainly not a communist. I suppose I lean more towards a socialist beat, but oh my god, the fact that we allow companies to keep doing this — and no one gets outraged — blows my mind.
Another internal document from the early 1990s admitted that recycling couldn’t yet be considered a solid waste solution.
They knew all along that recycling wasn’t viable — regardless of what Coke tells you.
But they pushed this narrative to avoid restrictions, kept investing in more production, and the campaign was wildly successful. I wish they’d run marketing for Incrediballs because they’ve been that effective.
Governments rolled out kerbside recycling programmes, shifting the burden of waste management onto consumers and local governments. By the 1990s, it was everywhere.
If plastic waste was a problem, it was your fault for not recycling properly. Industry-funded ads, school education programmes, and corporate-sponsored environmental initiatives all repeated the same message:
Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.
But what they conveniently left out is that reducing and reusing — the most important steps — were actively discouraged by plastic manufacturers.
By 2010, global plastic production reached 270 million tonnes per year. Less than 10% of it was ever recycled.
As Western nations expanded their recycling programmes, they began exporting plastic waste to countries like China, Malaysia, and Indonesia under the guise of recycling.
But most of these countries didn’t have the infrastructure to handle this waste, and the result was massive stockpiles, pollution, and environmental harm.
Even when plastic was collected for recycling, most of it wasn’t recycled. Much of it ended up in landfills, incinerators, or the environment.
The cost of properly sorting, cleaning, and processing plastic waste is so high that it just isn’t worth doing. In fact, many areas can’t afford to do it.
In the USA, less than 5% of plastic waste is recycled — and that’s supposedly the richest country on Earth.
In Aotearoa New Zealand, it's about 16%, although that number depends on where you are. The rest is landfilled or burned.
In Australia, despite extensive recycling infrastructure, the recycling rate sits at just 12%.
One of the biggest problems with recycling plastic is something called downcycling.
Plastic degrades every time it's processed. So, when plastic bottles are recycled, they lose a lot of their physical qualities — they’re less flexible, less strong. This means they need to be mixed with virgin plastic to make something new.
Even then, they’re often turned into lower-quality products like carpet fibres or clothing, which are far less recyclable the second time around. And when those eventually degrade into microplastics? They’re thrown away.
Recycling doesn’t prevent plastic from being made. It just delays the inevitable.
We’ve all done it — tossed everything into the recycling bin and hoped it’ll be recycled, even if we’re not sure.
This is called wishcycling, and it’s part of the problem.
Contaminated recycling streams often mean entire truckloads of material end up in landfills because they can’t be properly sorted. Recycling is a complex process where different resins need to be sorted correctly for recycling to be effective.
Now, we’re seeing an increased push for incineration under the guise of waste-to-energy.
Burning plastic creates energy, but in practice, it releases massive amounts of CO2, dioxins, and other toxic pollutants.
The EU has estimated that plastic incineration emits nearly one billion tonnes of CO2 every year. It’s a massive driver of climate change.
Ironically, plastic particles in the air have been hypothesised to have lowered global temperatures, possibly by as much as half a degree. I just think that’s… funny. Not funny haha — more funny sad.
Proponents of waste-to-energy say there are clean burners now with no emissions, but that’s chemically impossible. Burning anything creates waste gas emissions. It’s how it works.
Sure, some of the larger microplastics or toxic dioxins can be filtered out, but incineration will never be emission-free.
At the end of the day, the recycling system is fundamentally broken.
Without systemic change, it will continue to fail. The only real solution? Stop making plastic.
Who's surprised?
No one.
Currently, we’re producing 400 million tonnes of plastic every year — a terrifying number considering it was 270 million tonnes in 2010.
Production is expected to double again in just a few years if nothing changes.
Governments are the first port of call here.
They need to enforce strict regulations to limit plastic pollution. We’ve seen some progress with things like banning single-use plastics. In 2019, Aotearoa New Zealand banned single-use plastic bags, reducing plastic bag consumption by 18% within the first year.
But — and this is a big but — reusable bags have actually created a worse use of resources. We’ve banned things like plastic drink stirrers, cotton buds, and polystyrene packaging, which is great. But the government has since removed the 2025 deadline for banning PVC and polystyrene completely, citing difficulties in finding alternatives.
Australia has taken a state-based approach, where each state is responsible for banning things like plastic straws and cutlery. But really, they need a nationwide strategy.
There’s a global plastics treaty currently being negotiated by the United Nations. They were supposed to finalise it last year, but as we know with international agreements, it’s complicated.
The goal is to create a legally binding treaty that mandates reductions in plastic production — similar to the Montreal Protocol, which successfully restricted CFCs and ozone-depleting chemicals.
This treaty aims to deliver two things:
It’s not that complicated, but negotiations are dragging on. Hopefully, in 2025, we’ll see some movement.
While we wait for governments to get their act together, we need to focus on practical solutions.
45% of plastic is single-use.
Most of that is for convenience — coffee cups, takeaway packaging, cotton buds. If we eliminated these and transitioned to refill or reuse models, we could prevent millions of tonnes of plastic waste every year.
There are already businesses leading that charge.
Here in Aotearoa, we have Again Again, which you might have seen in your local café. It’s a system of reusable metal coffee cups that you borrow from one café and return to another participating location. Great system, but uptake has been slow due to consumer habits and lack of incentives.
There’s also LOOP, which was a partnership involving Unilever and Nestlé, where they provided reusable packaging for products like ice cream. But in practice, they didn’t work because — again — people didn’t use them.
Changing consumer behaviour is bloody difficult.
That’s why I didn’t go the refillable route with Ethique. It was about home-compostable cardboard — to make it more convenient for the consumer. Most people don’t recycle personal care products because they don’t have a recycling bin in their bathroom, and they can’t be bothered taking it to the kitchen.
This is my favourite solution.
We need Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) — making manufacturers financially responsible for the end-of-life disposal of their products.
The fact that this isn’t already widely accepted blows my mind.
When I talk about this on social media, people often ask, “Why should companies be responsible for what consumers do with their waste?”
I ask you — why shouldn’t they?
They make obscene amounts of money. They can easily fund recycling, collection, and new material research without blinking.
Countries like Canada and Germany already have decent EPR systems in place. In 2021, the EU introduced rules requiring companies to include a minimum amount of recycled plastic in their products and fund waste collection programmes.
Aotearoa is slowly moving in this direction with product stewardship schemes for tyres, e-waste, and batteries — but plastic packaging remains voluntary.
It shouldn't be.
I’ve said it once, I’ll say it a thousand times. I even asked a former Prime Minister about this and was told “It’s too complicated.”
Really?
Why aren’t we putting a tax on virgin plastic and funnelling that money into better recycling infrastructure or material innovation?
People get excited about biodegradable and compostable plastics. But I hate them.
Most of what you think of as compostable or bio-packaging isn’t.
A lot of these so-called compostable options require industrial composting — which doesn’t happen in most places. And they’re often not recyclable either.
Even if something is home-compostable, most people don’t have a compost bin. And if it goes to landfill, it doesn’t break down properly because landfills are anaerobic environments (no oxygen), which means nothing breaks down.
Let’s talk about ocean-bound plastic.
I was recently talking to our logistics team about packaging for Incrediballs. NZ Post’s system incentivises using satchels over boxes because it’s cheaper to ship. So, they suggested using some of the compostable options out there.
You’ve probably seen brands like Polastic, which claims to use ocean-bound plastic.
Ocean-bound plastic is a scam.
It’s defined as plastic collected within 50 kilometres of a coastline. To put that into perspective, the most inland point in Aotearoa New Zealand is 119 kilometres from the sea. So, almost everywhere counts as ocean-bound.
It’s just recycled plastic that won’t be recycled again. And most of these courier bags are soft plastics, which are notoriously hard to recycle.
We also need to end misleading claims about recyclability.
Many companies are now being sued for falsely stating their packaging is recyclable.
Technically, if something is made from PET (polyethylene terephthalate), it’s one of the easier plastics to recycle. But that doesn’t mean it will be recycled.
One of the biggest obstacles to addressing plastic waste is the widespread belief that everything we recycle is actually recycled. People assume that when they toss a plastic bottle into the recycling bin, it magically becomes another bottle.
It doesn’t.
Governments need to crack down on misleading claims and force companies to be more transparent.
In the US, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) updated its Green Guides to prevent companies from making vague claims like “recyclable” unless they can prove their products are widely accepted and treated in recycling facilities.
The EU has gone further by banning terms like “biodegradable” or “eco-friendly” unless they’re backed by scientific evidence.
Of course, there’s nothing like this happening in Aotearoa or Australia. But hopefully, they’re working their way up to it.
There’s so much I could say about what you can do, but the biggest takeaway is this:
Recycling is a scam.
You’ve been told that it’s your fault we have a plastic crisis. You’ve been led to believe that washing out your yoghurt pots will solve the problem. But the system is designed to fail.
And the companies making billions from plastic? They have no incentive to change.
I don’t want you to take this episode as “recycling is bad, don’t do it.”
I want you to recycle, yes — but don’t feel guilty if the system fails. And remember, the plastic crisis is about far more than just recycling.
We need to hold companies accountable. We need to make less waste. And we need governments to grow a spine and step up with real policies.
So next time you see a “please recycle” label on a plastic bottle, remember — it’s not a solution. It’s a marketing tool.
Kia ora, thanks for listening!
Hopefully, you found this interesting — maybe share it with someone who still believes everything they recycle is actually recycled.
Next up, I’ve got a super positive episode about rewilding and some of the incredible projects happening around the world. Spoiler alert: If we just step aside, the planet regenerates way faster than we ever thought.
Mā te wā.
And there you go! Sustainability isn’t about having everything in matching glass jars or living in a commune. If that’s your jam, fabulous — but at its heart, sustainability is just about using what you need.
If you enjoyed this episode, don’t keep it to yourself — drop me a rating and hit that subscribe button.
Kia ora, and I’ll see you next week.
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