Reduce, Reuse, Deceive

In 1950, the world produced just 2 million tons of plastic; in 2024, it produced around 360 million metric tons. In the last 20 years, plastic production has doubled, and without drastic policy changes, global plastic production is projected to almost triple by 2060 — half of which will end up in landfills and less than fifth ever recycled.

Against this backdrop, recycling has never come close to delivering the solution the public was promised. A 2025 study in the academic journal Nature found that the global plastics recycling rate has remained stagnant at 9%, against soaring production. The rest is burned, buried, or left to leach into rivers, soils, and oceans. Without management, scientists predict that 121 million metric tons of plastic waste filling in our landfills and polluting the environment will exist by 2050, weighing the equivalent of more than 36,000 Empire State Buildings.

The climate cost of the plastic crisis is enormous. Over 98% of plastics are made from fossil carbons, such as oil and gas, which are the largest contributors to and primary drivers of climate change. Specifically, plastic production and disposal accounts for roughly 3% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. As plastic production continues to soar, so too will its share of global emissions, a cost the planet simply cannot afford.

Big Oil’s Plastic Love

The daylight between what plastic recycling actually delivers and what the public believes is not an accident. It is the result of a deliberate and decades-long effort by the fossil fuel industry to shift responsibility away from producers and onto the public.

Big Oil is the name attributed to the West’s largest oil companies, who maintain a vested interest in plastics. Plastic is a way for oil companies to maintain profitability, particularly as the shift toward renewable energy threatens their traditional business model. Since 2010, fossil fuel companies have invested more than $180 billion into plastic plants in the U.S.

To defend its profitability, Big Oil has engaged in decades of deception. In the late 1950s, in response to Vermont’s ban of single-use bottles, food, drink, cigarette, and packaging companies formed Keep America Beautiful, an anti-litter organization that spent heavily on public campaigns promoting responsible disposable. Rather than addressing overproduction, these campaigns placed the burden squarely on the individual, framing plastic pollution as a litter problem. The message was simple: the problem was not the plastic itself, but individuals failing to throw it away correctly.

In the late 1980s, a growing percentage of the general public believed that plastics were harmful to the environment and public health. Faced with this widespread concern, Big Oil poured hundreds of millions of dollars into convincing the public that plastic was, in fact, largely recyclable. It was the beginning of a coordinated disinformation campaign, including the construction of recycling facilities. Many of these plants shut their doors within five years.

The construction of a recyclable future has proven far more appealing to Big Oil than actually building one. Adding to its sustained effort, the oil and plastic industry launched The Alliance to End Plastic Waste in 2019, a $1.5 billion campaign that promotes plastic recycling and clean up efforts, instead of calling for a limit on plastic production.

Alongside these disinformation campaigns was the creation of Resin Identification Codes, the numbers 1 through 7 imprinted on the bottom of plastic products to indicate their material composition. Created by the plastic industry, RICs give the illusion of a vast and viable recycling industry. In reality, only 30 percent of number 1 and 2 plastics are recycled, numbers 3 through 7 are much more difficult to recycle, and numbers 6 and 7 are not financially feasible to recycle.

The familiar three arrows recycling symbol, inspired by the Möbius strip, was originally conceived to promote genuine recycling. However, because it was never trademarked, the fossil fuel industry was free to co-opt it, transforming the symbol into a deceptive instrument that continues to mislead the public into believing that plastic recycling is achievable.

Big Oil’s tactics have led to California’s lawsuit against ExxonMobil, alleging that the company promoted recycling as a viable option while knowing for decades that it is both technically and economically unfeasible. In doing so, the company encouraged the excessive use of plastic while allowing the enormous volume of plastic waste in the environment to grow.

The Plastics Industry and Global Treaty Talks

The fossil fuel industry deploys lobbyists that resist proposed plastic bans at the federal, state, and local levels. More than 1,500 lobbyists in the U.S. serve both fossil fuel companies and cities, universities, and environmental groups who are fighting the fossil fuel industry that is causing climate change. Operating in a largely unregulated sector with few disclosure requirements, these lobbyists are under no legal obligation to declare such conflicts of interest, leaving environmental advocates unknowingly sharing counsel with Big Oil.

The influence of fossil fuel lobbying is also present at global efforts to address the plastic crisis. Since 2022, negotiations have been underway to negotiate a legally binding treaty on plastic pollution. Lobbyists for the plastics, fossil fuel, and chemical industries have flooded key negotiating sessions in an attempt to weaken or derail the agreement.

At the December 2024 talks in Busan, South Korea, 220 fossil fuel and chemical industry representatives were present, making the plastics lobby larger than the delegation of any single country or regional bloc, including the European Union. Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest crude oil exporter, led a group of oil-rich nations, including Russia and Iran, that successfully blocked efforts to include binding limits on plastic production.

Stop Plastic Production

The fossil fuel industry has had decades to address the plastic crisis, and it has chosen profit instead. In reality, the plastic crisis cannot be recycled away, which is why EARTHDAY.ORG is calling for a 60% reduction in plastic production by 2040. Sign the Global Plastics Treaty to call on global leaders to create a brighter future, one without plastic pollution.

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