Plastic has become embedded in everyday life. That’s because for the last 70 years, the plastics industry convinced consumers to embrace the material for its low cost and disposability.
Just for a minute, think about how much of the plastic you use today will end up as trash. Drink bottles? Grocery bags? Food wrappers? If you live in the United States,
Synthetic plastic was patented in the early 1900s. It was known as Bakelite, and it sparked a boom in durable and affordable consumer goods. Soon, companies started selling different kinds of plastic. At first, most of it was marketed as sturdy and reusable. One— about a made-up homemaker named Jane in a made-up place called Plasticstown, USA — touts how plastic containers are ideal for families because they won’t break if kids accidentally drop them.
Adults in the 1950s had lived through The Great Depression and World War II, and they were trained to save as much as possible, Davis says. So drink makers went on offense. Elmore says they fought bans on throw-away bottles and joined the plastics industry in pushing recycling as an environmental solution.
In 1976 — two years before big soft-drink makers introduced plastic soda bottles — a study by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration concluded that “substantial recycling of plastics is unlikely in the near future.” That echoes the agency’s“To make a gamble like that, where public agencies and public documents are saying this at the time, I think raises real questions about culpability, accountability in an era when I think a lot of people are asking for that,” Elmore says.globally.
A lot of the plastic waste around the Buffalo River is packaging sold by the food and beverage giant PepsiCo,that New York State Attorney General Letitia James filed last year against the company. New York prosecutors say plastic pollution around the Buffalo River is a public nuisance, and that Pepsi contributes to the problem by selling tons of single-use packaging.
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