A majority of voters in America support holding the plastics and fossil fuel industries accountable for allegedly deceiving the public about the feasibility of recycling.
That is according to a new poll by Data for Progress and the Center for Climate Integrity (CCI) and includes more than half of Republicans.
Over the past decade, dozens of lawsuits have been filed against consumer plastics brands, and the fossil fuel and plastics industries have been increasingly scrutinized for contributing to the plastic pollution crisis around the world, reported The Guardian.
The results of the poll demonstrate that “regardless of your politics, no one is really OK with a corporation lying to consumers,” said leader of the report Davis Allen, an investigative researcher at CCI.
A CCI report from earlier this year found that the plastics industry has known for decades that extensive recycling of its products was unrealistic, but continued to mislead the public. Likewise, fossil fuel companies were aware that oil and gas were responsible for climate change and that plastics - made from petroleum - would never be recycled at scale, CCI said.
“The companies lied,” said Richard Wiles, president of CCI. “It’s time to hold them accountable for the damage they’ve caused.”
Nearly 70 percent of participants said they felt strongly that the plastics industry should be held accountable for the worldwide plastic waste crisis, with 59 percent responding that the fossil fuel industry should as well.
According to a report by Greenpeace, only five percent of U.S. household plastic waste was recycled in 2021. However, respondents to the poll estimated the percentage of the country’s plastic waste that gets recycled to be nearly 45 percent.
Will this poll help change anything? Well, it might. California Attorney General Rob Bonta launched an investigation of petrochemical and fossil fuel producers in 2022 “for their role in causing and exacerbating the global plastics pollution crisis.” As a result, Alyssa Johl, general counsel and vice president of CCI, noted: “California’s investigation is the first to focus on not only the fossil fuel and petrochemical companies that produce plastic, but also their deceptive and fraudulent conduct in promoting recycling as a false solution to the plastic waste crisis. If that investigation results in a lawsuit, it would be the first of its kind, and our findings show the public would support it.”
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