Critics call out plastics industry over recycling "fraud" — CBS Sunday Mornings, 2024, 5:02 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9tWPLaeNxE

Sociologists have long critiqued the popularity of individual-level “solutions” to larger social problems. Such solutions focus on what individuals could/should do in order to solve the pressing social problems of our time. Yet, in order to effectively address social problems and benefit society as a whole, we need structural-level solutions such as policy reform, changes in our culture, and other large-scale interventions. One great example of this phenomenon is the emphasis on recycling for the plastic waste problem. As this video explains, by framing recycling at the individual level as the solution to society’s plastic waste problem, corporate waste producers have long escaped culpability and regulation.

From the video’s description: About 48 million tons of plastic waste is generated in the United States each year, but only 5 to 6 percent of it is actually recycled. A new report from the Center for Climate Integrity, "The Fraud of Plastic Recycling," accuses the plastics industry of a decades-long campaign to "mislead" the public about the viability of recycling. Correspondent Ben Tracy talks with the report's co-author, Davis Allen, and with Jan Dell, a former chemical engineer, about an inconvenient truth surrounding the lifecycle of plastic.