The plastics industry has long been externalizing its pollution onto society.  The industry pollutes the air and waterways with its industrial production processes, releasing harmful chemicals and climate-change-causing CO2 into the environment, effecting the health of human populations in communities adjacent to production operations –many of which are minority and impoverished populations.  Post-consumer plastics waste has become a critical environmental issue effecting life across the planet and posing a significant threat to the earth's oceans, polluting inland waterways and over-burdening landfills. 

The solution is for the industry to own responsibility and to be held accountable for its waste -something that the plastics industry has spends hundreds of millions of dollars annually to avoid.

One of the key strategies for avoidance is the promise of new miracle technologies, such as those labeled by the industry as "advanced recycling" that convert plastic waste into usable stocks for the production of more plastic in a "circular economy".  

While there is no evidence that these promised technological miracles are up to the task, they provide a useful distraction to a public that is lacking in technical knowledge, journalists who are enamored of the latest shiny new thing, and policymakers who are eager to please some of their biggest and most powerful political patrons.