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A former EPA official on how the plastics industry sabotages real recycling
https://vtdigger.org/2025/12/10/vermont-conversation-a-former-epa-official-on-how-the-plastics-industry-sabotages-real-recycling/“[The industry] has spent millions of dollars advertising, telling us, ‘don’t worry about all the plastic you’re generating,'” said Judith Enck, a former regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency. “That is deceptive.”
“Plastic is everywhere — wrapped around our food, stitched into our clothes, even coursing through our veins.” That’s how Judith Enck begins her new book, “The Problem with Plastic: How We Can Save Ourselves and our Planet Before It’s Too Late,” co-authored with Adam Mohoney.
A former regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, Enck warns that plastics are a toxic industry that are poisoning people and the environment. Plastic production has gone from two million tons per year in 1950, to 450 million tons per year today.
The plastics industry has spent millions selling the material as safe and sustainable, but only 6% of plastic is recycled. Plastic recycling is a “false solution,” Enck said. “Plastic recycling has never worked. Never will work.”
The plastics industry has “spent millions of dollars advertising, telling us, ‘don’t worry about all the plastic you’re generating,’ just toss it in your recycling bin. That is deceptive, and it is so deceptive that the Attorney General of California Rob Bonta sued the nation’s largest maker of plastic, the little mom and pop company known as Exxon Mobil, for deceptive claims around plastics recycling and chemical recycling.”
. . .
A former regional administrator for the Environmental Protection Agency, Enck warns that plastics are a toxic industry that are poisoning people and the environment. Plastic production has gone from two million tons per year in 1950, to 450 million tons per year today.
The plastics industry has spent millions selling the material as safe and sustainable, but only 6% of plastic is recycled. Plastic recycling is a “false solution,” Enck said. “Plastic recycling has never worked. Never will work.”
The plastics industry has “spent millions of dollars advertising, telling us, ‘don’t worry about all the plastic you’re generating,’ just toss it in your recycling bin. That is deceptive, and it is so deceptive that the Attorney General of California Rob Bonta sued the nation’s largest maker of plastic, the little mom and pop company known as Exxon Mobil, for deceptive claims around plastics recycling and chemical recycling.”
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