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plastic pollution
The Plastic Waste Crisis Isn’t an Accident—Big Oil Created It
To protect their markets, the petrochemical companies began a decades-long, coordinated effort to sell the public on plastic recycling—despite their knowledge that it was neither technically nor economically viable.
May 23, 2026
We’re all living in a world—and in bodies—more polluted with plastic than the one our parents grew up in. And with global plastic production increasing by 3-3.5% annually and expected to double by 2040 or 2050, our children, and their children, will inherit even more plastic particles in everything from their food systems to their internal organs.
Two new pieces of media shine a light on the enormous harm that these invasive plastics are causing to our health across generations—and how Big Oil and the plastics industry have not only caused this crisis but also are bent on continuing it with no end in sight.
The Netflix documentary Plastics Detox details how the endocrine-disrupting chemicals from plastics contaminate three generations: the mother, the fetus, and the fetus' developing reproductive cells—“a toxic trespass," according to an expert interviewed by the film’s producers. Following environmental and reproductive epidemiologist Dr. Shanna Swan as she strives to help couples struggling with infertility, the film shows how chemicals found in plastic are identified as major endocrine disruptors, significantly contributing to hormone dysfunction, lower sperm quality, and falling fertility rates.
Just as viewers begin to wonder, how did we even get here? How is there so much plastic in… well, everything? California Attorney General Rob Bonta appears on screen, succinctly explaining that “the entire plastics industry is built on a lie”—that we can simply recycle our way out of the problem. “The only reason that plastics today are ubiquitous is because the people were told that this product can be recycled,” Bonta explains. Investigations from the Center for Climate Integrity and others have revealed that the major fossil fuel and petrochemical companies that produce and sell plastics have long known recycling was not a technically or economically viable solution to plastic waste.
Attorney General Bonta has the right idea—we need to bring an end to the fossil fuel and petrochemical industry lies.
On behalf of California, Bonta has filed a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against ExxonMobil that seeks to hold the oil giant, and the world’s biggest producer of the polymers used in single-use plastics, accountable for helping to create and push that myth.
A new book by journalist Beth Gardiner, Plastics Inc.: The Secret History and Shocking Future of Big Oil’s Biggest Bet, details the more than 100-year evolution of the plastics industry, including the industry’s deliberate efforts to reshape our society from one that, coming out of the Great Depression and World War II, reduced and reused its materials to one that simply disposed of them. Disposability equals profitability to the industry. Gardiner details how plastics’ inability to be reused or recycled was not a bug, but a feature. As one industry leader put it at the 1956 Society of Plastics Industry conference, “The future of plastics is in the trash can.” To actualize plastics’ true selling potential, the industry would have to “teach people how to waste.”
From there, the world’s leading petrochemical companies, with their ethos of single-use disposability, went on to create the plastic waste crisis. The American public, though, quickly became wary of plastic pollution and began to push back. In response, the industry first promoted landfilling and incineration to hide the plastic from view. But it quickly became clear that these disposal options would not placate a public frustrated by a flood of disposable plastics. People did not want more landfills, did not want incineration, and did not want plastic in the environment. This public outcry led to calls for bans on single-use plastics. To protect their markets, the petrochemical companies began a decades-long, coordinated effort to sell the public on plastic recycling—despite their knowledge that it was neither technically nor economically viable.
No amount of effort, investment, public education, or consumer diligence can overcome a material that resists recycling at a molecular level. Plastic’s intrinsic structure creates technical and economic barriers that make successful, safe, and scalable plastic recycling impossible—barriers that plastics producers identified in their own internal assessments as early as the 1970s. Rather than acknowledging these limitations, the industry has embarked on a nearly half-century long campaign to ensure the public never learned about them.
Now the world’s largest plastics producers make public commitments to expand the use and capacity of chemical (or “advanced”) recycling, even in the face of overwhelming evidence demonstrating that major economic and technical limitations remain unresolved. Chemical recycling operations continue to flounder as a result of predictable issues, including many of the same factors that industry insiders identified decades ago, while companies quietly retreat from their heavily publicized commitments once their public relations value has expired.
We are now awash in plastic. It is literally everywhere, quietly changing our human existence. Attorney General Bonta has the right idea—we need to bring an end to the fossil fuel and petrochemical industry lies. Consumers are legally entitled to make informed decisions. Corporations cannot be given unfettered license to continue to sell us baseless false solution after baseless false solution. They must be held accountable.
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AI Job Cuts, Plastic Pollution, and Experimental Nuclear: Why I Oppose Dow
We are building a new and sustainable economy on our terms. This is what Dow wants to take away from us; I refuse.
Apr 19, 2026
I’m a 77-year-old shrimper from the Texas Gulf Coast, and the AI revolution has reached my town. Early this year, Dow Chemical announced global cuts to 4,500 jobs as it moves toward artificial intelligence. News of the layoffs tore through our rural community of Seadrift–where some of the thousand people work at the local Dow facility–with the devastation of a hurricane. Replacing workers with robots might be Dow’s latest blow, but this toxic industry has wronged my hometown of Seadrift for 70 years.
I recently completed a 30-day hunger strike on the public property (ditch) outside of Dow Chemical, during which time the sheriff actually arrested me while I was attempting to deliver my letter of demands to a company representative here in my hometown.
For decades, Dow has illegally dumped plastic and chemical waste into the local bays and waterways, which have sustained this fishing community for more than 170 years. Now, the company wants government approval for a new permit that would legalize plastic pollution at the Seadrift plant, and allow the construction of experimental nuclear reactors to power it.
As a native Seadrifter, I say: No.
Industry promised us prosperity, but we lost our economy and our heritage.
Dow is planning massive job cuts right now, despite collecting $177 million in bank finance since 2019—which is more funding than any other petrochemical company currently expanding in the US, according to a new report, "Toxic Finance."
What lasting good have these toxic pollution factories ever done for this community?
My family made a living on the water for four generations, and I’ve been a shrimper all my life. I remember when Union Carbide (now Dow) and Formosa Plastics came to our communities with glossy pamphlets and slick presentations. Our elected officials made a devil’s bargain, and “a little pollution” turned into billions of plastic pellets and tons of chemicals in our water.
When the local bays got sick, the communities started dying with it. First, as in Formosa Plastic’s case, industry bought out the ranchers; then an elementary school; and finally, through a class action suit, bought out citizens and now own their homes. Local businesses have been boarded up throughout the county. As a young woman, I worked at Froggy’s fish house; now, it’s a concrete slab. Four more were bulldozed. A hundred boats used to launch from our docks at the start of shrimp season; today, we’re lucky if we have five. Industry promised us prosperity, but we lost our economy and our heritage. As the old saying goes, our downtown died by a thousand cuts.
I always knew it was a raw deal, but at least some of us got steady jobs… at least for a little while. Now, Dow can’t even deliver on that meager promise. Instead, Dow joins the likes of Amazon, UPS, and dozens of other multinational corporations looking to replace American workers with artificial intelligence.
Nobody from Dow has even responded to me after 30 days of fasting and living in a tent outside of their facility, despite acknowledging receipt of my demand letter to Dow's CEO. To be clear, I will not rest until this company:
- Commits to zero discharge of plastic pellets, powder, and flakes from its Seadrift facility and incorporates that commitment into its operating permit; and
- Cancels all plans to build nuclear reactors at the site and withdraws its construction permit application from the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission.
On a bright note, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) has confirmed that a public meeting about Dow’s proposed changes to the water discharge permit will be held at some unspecified time in the future… and so, the fight continues!
Believe me, dear folks, people still have power. I sued Formosa Plastics and won the largest citizen lawsuit settlement under the Clean Water Act in US history—$50 million plus additional fines because the company can’t stop polluting the bay—all of which has gone into a public trust designed to restore the fishing communities, the bays, and the local environment.
Our trust funded a cooperative of 250 fisherfolk working together to revitalize our seafood industry, which now has its own office, a processing plant, and a 60-acre oyster farm that will grow to become the largest in the Gulf. We are building a new and sustainable economy on our terms.
This is what Dow wants to take away from us. I refuse.
Will you join me in fighting back against corporate greed?
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Trump's EPA Wants to Count Microplastics While Corporations Keep Dumping Them
Committing $144 million to study microplastics while subsidizing fossil fuels by nearly $31 billion a year is like trying to clean up an oil spill with a spoon while the tanker is still spewing.
Apr 14, 2026
At a time when the science is clear, and action is overdue, the Trump administration’s STOMP initiative—aimed at measuring and removing microplastics from the human body—is a convenient distraction that delays real action. We do not need more studies to understand microplastics in our bodies. We need policies that prevent them from getting there in the first place.
For years, scientists have warned that we are breathing, eating, and drinking plastic. Microplastics—which contain more than 4,200 chemicals known to be hazardous to human health—are in our blood, lungs, and unborn babies.
And while there’s something validating about the Trump administration finally acknowledging this problem, putting microplastics on a watch list is not protection. Instead, this declared "war on microplastics" is a gift in disguise to the industries driving the crisis.
MAHA Promised Safety, It Gave us Plastic Straws
“Make America Healthy Again” was a rallying cry: Take on the corporate polluters, clean up our food supply, eliminate toxic chemicals, and hold the chemical industry accountable. The MAHA Report acknowledged that microplastics are found in "the blood and urine of American children and pregnant women,” and promised action from the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
The problem is that the only real way to fix it is to stop it at the source. That means taking on the fossil fuel industry driving plastic production—an industry to which this administration has shown deep loyalty.
That was the promise. But instead, the Trump administration gave us plastic straws and put single-use plastics back in our National Parks. They slashed the EPA's budget nearly in half—the very agency responsible for the new microplastics plan—and fired more than 1,000 of its scientists. They dismantled the agencies that protect us from chemical disasters and exposure to harmful hazards, like lead. They ramped up glyphosate production and appointed chemical-industry lobbyists to leadership roles within the EPA. They’re also weakening the Toxic Substances Control Act and rolling back protections on PFAS in drinking water.
While EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin claims the administration is holding itself “to the highest standards to protect the health of every American,” it continues to gut science, weaken laws, and hollow out the very institutions responsible for protecting public health—giving polluting industries a free pass to keep producing more.
Even MAHA advocates are beginning to see through the rhetoric. In a recent letter to the EPA, they urged:“The EPA must choose whether it will uphold a chemical status quo or honor the promise to make this country healthy again. The public is watching. Families are organizing. Scientists are sounding the alarm.”
$144 Million to Understand the Problem, $31 Billion to Fuel It
Microplastics don’t just randomly end up in our bodies. They come from a system designed to produce endless plastic at any cost. That system is fueled by oil, gas, and coal. Nearly 99% of plastics are made from fossil fuels. Committing $144 million to study microplastics while subsidizing fossil fuels by nearly $31 billion a year is like trying to clean up an oil spill with a spoon while the tanker is still spewing.
The Trump administration has put a spotlight on a serious health crisis. The problem is that the only real way to fix it is to stop it at the source. That means taking on the fossil fuel industry driving plastic production—an industry to which this administration has shown deep loyalty. As Secretary of the US DHHS, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., put it on Fox News: “A lesson we were all supposed to learn in kindergarten is that you clean up after yourself. You don't force the public to do it.”
The coming months will show whether this administration is serious about action or simply delivering lip service to a disillusioned MAHA ahead of the midterms. If the administration is really committed to making Americans healthy again, it must act where it matters: Set enforceable limits on microplastics in drinking water, restore strong chemical safety laws, halt new plastic production, rebuild the EPA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and revoke the red-carpet access it has granted industry within regulatory agencies.
Above all, it could truly end the war on microplastics by backing a global plastics treaty that limits production in the first place.
Because you cannot detox a body you are still poisoning.
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