And by the corration for public broadcasting. Major support is provided by thn john d. And catht. Macarthur foundation, committed to building a more just, verdant and peaceful world. More information at macfound. Org. F the fondation working with visionaries on the frontlines of social change worldwide. At fordfoundation. Org. Additional support is provided by the abrams foundation,co itted to excellence in journalism. The park foundation,gh dedicated to hning Public Awareness of critical issues. The john and helenlessner family trust. Supporting trustworthy journalism that informs and inspires. And by the frontle urnalism fund, withajor support from jon an jo ann hagler. And Additional Support from the millicent and eugene bell foundation. water burbling Laura Sullivan in 2015, a marine biologist came across a sea turtle in distress. I dont want to pull it too hard. Yeah, i mean, its bleeding already. Oh, poor baby. Im sorry. bleep bleep christ. That is plastico. Oh, man. Thats plastic. Dont tell me its a freaking straw. I ts just freaking. Va sullin her video of the encounter quickly went viral. This poor sea turtle. Tr sullivan it would atact more than 35 million views. Action. Ecame a rallying cry for sullivan and focused public attention on a growing problem. That turtle video certainly did have an impact. Plastic pollution a planetary crisis. Sullivan plaics in the decades. Ave been building up for in an underwater paradise, a plastic nightmare. S sullivan recurring ima dead whales. 80 plastic bags found inside the whale. Sullivan bloated seabirds. Oh. Sullivan . And littered waterways have fueled a global antiplastic movement. Enemy number one the plastic straw. Many u. S. Citieare taking steps to ban Plastic Grocery bags. Save our earth before its too late sullivan and yet, despite the backlash, the industry that makes plastic isxpanding. The start of construction on that multibilliondollar plastics plant. Sullivan plentiful supplies of natural gas are driving down the cost of making plastic. The u. S. Is now one of the Worlds Largest plastic proders. Its going to be the largest plant of its kind in the world. Sullivan and industry is investing tens of billions of dollars in new plastic plants. Construction will eventually employ 6,000 people. Sullivan by 2050, its estimated that Global Production of plastic will triple. A plastic boom. Theres going to more plastic than ever on the face. Sullivan i wanted tome understand how we o this moment, how the Plastic Industry has been able to thrive all thesyears in the face of a growing crisis, and opsition thats now stronger than its ever been. For decades, the natnal response to the growing plasticwaste problem has focuseon one solution recycling. And few places have pursued recycling more aggressively than oregon. What we put in our recycling bins ends up in sorting plants like this one, outside of portland. Were actually very full right w. Sullivan this is, this is all coming in fresh. This is the first unload, right . Yeah. When it comes in. Looks like sullivan vinod singh is the outreach manag at far west recycling. Slivan every single piece of this has to be sorted in some way. Yeah, you havto separate paper and then the metals and then the plastics. Sullivan there are a lot of different kinds of plastics that have to be sorted. And what were doing here is werrting it out into the milk jugs, the naturaldpe, theen pigmd hdpe, p. E. T. Water bottles. Va sulli theyre looking for plastics. Yeah so all the plastic will come off before the line ends. Li suln some items, like soda bottles and milk jugs, e easier to recycle, so theres money to be made. So, this is all plastic that has a home. Sullivan but most other pes of plastic are techniclyn difficult and oftecostly to recycle. And that makes them nearlyo impossiblesell. So they keep piling up. This is plastic that haso home. This is plastic that has home, so its your clamshells, ziploc bags, film, a cd, a food, like, a food wrapper. Sullivan ithe business theyre called mixed plastics. Now, youre getting more mixed plastics, like pouches, and everything comes in a, in a clamshelnow. Sullivan so, if somebody throws their te bottle into their bin, thats a win. Yeah. Sullivan but what youre saying is youre seeing more and more othis stuff. Packaging is evolving. Sullivan most mixed plasticp enn a place like this. What youre seeing happening right now is, thats a fullsize, thats a, probably a 53foot trailer. Sullivan in medford, oregon, rogue disposals landfill takes about a hundred loads of tra a day. And more and more of it is plastic. Plastic films, plastic bags, the plastic wrapping that comes around a lot of packaged goods that all goes into the garbage. Its margarine tubs, clamshells, the deli containers. Until there is a viable optione for recycling things, we should be putting it ia landfill. B sulliva thats not what weve been told for decades, as the things we buy have been increasingly packaged in astic. Are you david . Im Laura Sullivan. Very nice to meet you. Slivan nice to meet you, too. Welcome to portland. Sullivan David Allaway is a senior policy analyst with the egon department of environmental quality. So much of all this stuff in the Grocery Store is plast now. Its rely inexpensive. Sullivan its an easy way to package it. It is, and it performs, it performs very well. It has really good engineering qualities, it protects food very well. Sullivan this is my basic question, because it seems like everybody is buying lette in a box now. Is this recyclable . In this state, none of this is, none of thiss recyclable. Sullivan okay, what about all these . This is everywhere in every surmarket. In oregon, again, there are no curbside programs that would accept any of these tubs. Sullivan okay, so, this is classic, when, a lot of americans dohis, like what youre doing right now. Yep, thats right s livan they flip it over. What are we looking at . At the bottom of all these plastic containers is this little chasing arrow, the little recycling symbol, with a number. And e number, theres somet words, isays, 1 p. E. T. E. This package here is technically recyclable. You could recycle this in a lab. Sullivan oka b its not economical to recycle it, given the current economics of recycli. Sullivan but if its not happening in oregon, it makes me wonder whats goinon in the rest of the country. Yeah, i would, i would say that this package is rarely recycled in most parts in the country. Sullivan yeah. Can i give you another example here . Sulliva so, lets take a look at these blueberries. Sullivan okay. This is classic. And if you turn this over, you see the chasing arrows. On the bottom, it says, 100 recyclable. Er is no program in oregon that wants this in the curbside. But more than half of all people that live in the portland areae believthis belongs in the curbside container. Sullivan well, it says its recyclable. Ys it ts recyclable. It has the recycling logo. Its very confusing to a lot of people. Sullivan this confusion eabout what can and cant recycled, and where plastic ultimately ends up, is no accident. Over the past year, weve been vestigating the plastic crisis and found that many of the problems we face today were t in motion decades ago by the very companies who make plastic in the first place. One of those companies is dupont, and on the grounds of the first Dupont Family home, ia found gley library. Ld movie score playing it holds one of the worlds largescollections of industrial history. This is an american city, aty real commuf homes and homemakers like thousands of others across the nation. We call it plasticstown, u. S. A. Sullivan id come to see what its archive could tell me about the evolution of the the table is set with polyethylene products, too. Sullivan americas postwar boom preseed endlessis opportunities for ew durable, lightweight material. Modernday miraes that were made with the help of peochemicals. Sullivan from packaging to clothing to home furnishings. Very durable. Sullivan plastics wideranging applications. Glassine, pyethylene, mylar. Sullivan . Promised a new world through chemistry. Step into the world of manmade materials that take up where nature left off. The thing that made them unique was the ability to do l more with justtle bit of material, to make things that we usedighter and more efficien so, plastic came to be used in many applications because it performed better. That was not a trick. It did a good job of doing what it was asked to do. It made life more efficient and easier. chanting save our earth sullivan but by 1970, the confront the Turbulent Times of americas environmental awakening. One in every ten americans took part in rallies. Sullivan earth day was o of the largest mass protests in u. S. History. Oh, earth day was profound in terms of people waking up to the fact that we live on a finite planet. D there was a lot of concern about the trend that was happening towards the more throway, disposable lifestyle. dramatic music playing sullivan in respse, many compies, including plastic makers, and even some environmenlists, got behind an iconic ad campaign that focused attention on the pubrole. And i remember being a kid and watching those ads, theon most famous with the crying inan. Some people have a deep, abiding respect for the Natural Beauty that was once this country. He was actually italian, dressed up like an indian, but the fake crying indi, the most famous one, ends with this very dramatic sentence where they say. T people stllution. People can stop it. People all around the country bought that line and thought it was our responsibility to take americans discard more trash than any other country in the world. Sullivan while the efforts to change Consumer Behavior helped clean up the more visible litter problem, they did little to address the root cause. Li what makes our ves convenient is burying us. Sullivan the unchecked growth in household waste. Ba a barge filled with g is causing quite an international stink. Loaded with more than 3,000 tons of waste from new yorks long island. Sullin by 1987, a wandering barge called the mobro became an emblem of the growingr is. Greenpeace went and climbed aboard it and took a huge banner that we put on it. We said, next time, try recycling. It really became a metaphor of, we are bumping up against limits her we cannot keep just continuing this mindless consumerism, mindless consumption, and dump it somewhere else. Rb american has a e problem too long ignored. Sullivan at hagley, we found stcollection of internal p industry documents. Thk you. voiceover . About this period of time, when the industry was in the crosshrs of the environmental movement, and plastics we under attack. As wcontinued reporting,e found even more internal documents and court filings, and spoke with over a dozen industry insiders, including three top executives who represented the big plastic producers and agreed to talk publicly for the first time. Back then, one of the vice y president s at the societof the plastics industry was lew freeman. He now heads a local environmental coalition, but he remembers a pivotal Board Meeting in the late 80s, when the industry was worried about its publicmage. The ve president of the Dupont Company pulled me asidean said, you, you guys better get up to wilmington. Theres dissatisfactn about whats going on with the solidwaste issue. We took a trek up to wilmington, and this one dupont executive, he sd, i thk if we had five Million Dollars which seemed like a lot of money then. Sullivan five million . We had five millionar do we could, we could, we could solve this problem. Sullivan they created the lutions, drawn from their ranks of bigil and Petrochemical Companies that made plastic, like amoco,ex chevron, dow, ann. The group had a plan and turned to a veteran of the industry, ron liesemer, to execute it. They wanted to know, was ied interen being the guy who actually made recycling happen across the. S. . Sullivan i mean, you got handed this task. Yeah. R sullivan . Ycle plastic in the united states. In the united states. Literally me. I had no sta but i had millions of dollars to do what i felt wasecessary. In a highly controversial action, one county in new yorks state ted to ban all packaging made of two kinds of plastic. Sullivan it was a critical moment. Growing backlash was threatening the future of plastic. In what may be part of and national tthe city council of saint paul, minnesota, voted to outlaw the use of polystyrens cs. Sullivan liesemer was sent to minnesota on an urgent mission. Plastic were facing banat used their products. There was an attitude that if your product was not rycled, then it should not be in the marketplace. P so, it was us in the plastics industry solve this problem so that they could continue to package their oducts in plastic. Sullivan and liesemer found a solution. To appease government officis, the industry funded a local recycling pilot project. The industry attitude was, well set this up and get it going, but if the public wants it, they are going to have to pay for. Sullivan the plastic bans were averted. Do you think that they took a lesson away from how to fight the ba . Oh, yes. It was, we need to be doing things. L sullivae what . Dont wait until legislation appears. E sullivan yourying yes, do it first. And we did. Sullivan did you feel like they cared more about selling plastic than they did about making recycling work . Making recycling work was a way to keep their prodts i the marketplace. Ll plastic. it was a way to yes. Its a winwin situation. You get recycling going, that has its benefits, and it improves the image of the material. Sullivan the industry found another way to promote plastic using recycling. Responding to pressure from states and environmentalists to better identify thny types of plastic, it created a code t. Tell them ap that code was a numbering system put inside the wellknn symbol for recycling, the chasing arrows. The problem, recyclers said, is that it left the impression that all those kinds of plastics were actually being recycled. Coy smith ran recycling centers in Southern California in the 1980s and early 90s. All right, thereou are. During that time, the plastics industry, they went around to states, and theye convinced thates to pass laws, and they did this very quiey. They passed laws that required that symbol with the nber on it be put on plastic containers sold in that state. I mean, for most states, they did it in, recyclers dnt even know it happened. And the next thing you know, all the plastic containers he these symbols on them. Sullivan is this a good thing or a bad thing . Its a bad thing. Sullivan why . Because the average person saw the symbol, they know the symbol, and said, well, its recyclable, righ sullivan its got three arrows. Well, like, all of a sudden, our own customers, they wouldan bring it in d not only say it has the triangle, but it would,u they would flasay, it says its recyclable right on it. And id be, like, i can tell you i cant give this away. Theres no one that would even take it if i paid for them to take it. Thats how unrecyclable it was. Sullivan stuckith plastics they couldnt sell, smith and other recyclers met with representatives from the Plastic Industry. Do you see the one. Yeah, theres my name, right there. C sullivan ame up with report identifying key problems with the numbering code. Some firms e using it as a Green Marketing tool. The code is being misused. Sullivan the Plastic Industryhat you were working with agreed to these and signed onto this report. They did. Sullivan so they knew thatth e problems existed. They knew these problems existed, absolutely. Astic makers couldnt agree onpl how to cnge the code. Industry would only switch to a triangle, which recyclers said was too similar to the chasing arrows. Industry wouldnt en consider, say, no triangle, or a circle, or, i mean. They didnt want to gono anywhere neariangle. We said, go to a square, go to some other symbol, just not the triangle, and they, they said, no. Coming up with ways to have their product perceived asla more rece and more environmental makes their product look bette theyant to sell more plastic coainers. Li svan recyclers also appealed to government industry. S, but they sided with they sd that the chasing arrows symbol was okay, as long as it was small and on the bottom of packaging. What if its got a chasing arrow sign on it, and you think that means its getting recled . Uh, that, that was one of the comments early, that it impliedt thse products were being recycled. Sullivan were they . Were they misleading the public . Iont think so, because when i looked at them, at the arrows, i thought, this is a way to identify the products so that recycling, the early stages of recycling can take place. Sullivan but even as liesemer and his colleagues were publicly promoting recycling, privately, the industry had long expressed doubt it was everon going to happen a broad scale. One internal document from the society of thelastics industry cautioned, the techniques of cleaning and separating the mixed plastics. Has not beenlo defor largescale economic application. Another saidthere are no effective marketechanisms for mixed plastic. D this document was candid there is serious doubt widespread plasticecycling can ever be made viable on an econic basis. How could they go into all of these communities and tell people, you just have to recycle, when they knew there were so many problems and so many hurdles . Some were very skeptical t felt they had to do it. I think others were, were more hopeful. Th e was never an enthusiasti belief that recycling was ultimately going to workn a significant way. Sullivan freemans boss at the time, larry thomas, the head of theociety of the plastics industry, was blunt about it. I was the front man for the astics industry. No getting around it. Sullin thos wouldnt sit down for an oncamera interview, but agreed to talk on the phone if blic thinks the recycling is working, theney e not going to be as concerned about the environment. Think they knew that the infrastructure wasnt there to really have recycling amount to a whole lot. Sullivan thomas wrote a confidential memo in 1989 out the precious position the industry was in. The image of plasti among consumers is deteriorating at an alarmingly fast pace, it says. Were approaching apoint of no return. business is being lost. Analysts are beginning to take notice. We Must Immediately undertak