The Recycling Illusion: Big Oil’s Greatest PR Campaign
Recycling wasn’t built to solve the problem of excess plastic. It was built to make us feel like there was someone solving it, that someone took responsibility.
It gave corporations cover to keep producing. It offered consumers reassurance. It provided governments with a convenient excuse to postpone stronger rules. And for decades, it worked...until the bins overflowed, the illusion cracked, and plastic began turning up in our food, our lungs, and even our bloodstreams (Bag Maverick).
How the promise of recycling often masks the reality that much plastic still escapes into the environment.
Here’s the part most public campaigns don’t mention: Even when plastic is collected, entire batches are rejected because they’re contaminated with food residue, oils, or adhesives that make reprocessing impossible (OECD). And even if you solve that, much of the plastic we use is mixed with layers of other materials that can’t be separated. It ends up in landfill or incinerated.
And even when you somehow get only “clean,” single-type plastic, resins like PET degrade after a few cycles and require virgin fossil fuels to stay usable, so more plastic ends up added to the system (American Chemical Society). Read our earlier piece on Why Plastic Wasn’t the Problem (Until It Was).
Decades of penalties, incentives, and “awareness campaigns” haven’t fixed this. According to an investigation by NPR and PBS Frontline, the industry has known since the 1970s that large-scale recycling would be technically and economically unlikely to succeed without enormous systemic change.
Recycling is often promoted as a sustainable solution to plastic waste. But when you look closely, the word “sustainable” loses meaning without clear definitions, like contamination rates, recovery yields, or lifecycle emissions.
Regulations are slowly changing. The EU now requires bottles to include at least 25% recycled content by 2025 (Packaging Europe). But relative to the scale of production, these targets remain too low to make a significant difference.
This doesn’t mean recycling is worthless. It means it was never designed to be the comprehensive fix we were sold. For businesses, this is an important lesson: good intentions and popular narratives can still lead to overclaims that damage credibility.
Today, sustainability expectations are higher and scrutiny is sharper. Regulators and consumers increasingly expect clear evidence behind every claim, from “recyclable” to “net zero.”
That’s why relying on vague statements or outdated assumptions about recycling (or any environmental initiative) now carries real reputational and regulatory risks. Tools like HowLegit can help you stress-test your sustainability messaging, quickly scan for red flags or overclaims, and build confidence that your communications are aligned with current standards, before they become liabilities.
If you’re interested in clearer strategies, connect with Mr. G - Galeno Chua and check out Business Sustainability Accelerator.
Watch our explainer clip: here
