Sustainably Speaking: The Road to Circularity | America’s Plastic Makers®

What is sustainability, what is circularity, and how do they impact your daily life?

On this episode of Sustainably Speaking, host Joshua Baca of America’s Plastic Makers®, NOVA Chemicals Director of Sustainability Sarah Marshall, and McKinsey Partner Jeremy Wallach discuss the importance of reducing plastic waste by creating and maintaining a circular economy for plastics. Listen in as they dive into what it means to create a system where no plastic materials are wasted and how America’s Plastic Makers are making it possible through our Circular Economy Goals and Roadmap to Reuse.

Informative but biased

This series go into interesting depth on how to repurpose and recreate plastics to contribute to a circular and sustainable economy. You need to know that it is sponsored by international plastics council and this is very obvious in praise of plastics as necessary in many contexts. A few episodes sound like commercials but the actual information and innovation reviewed is important.

A fair bit of green washing and spin

I am concerned this is a greenwashing effort by the petrochemical industry. I want to be open to sincere efforts to utilize some of our best resourced scientists to try to solve our climate catastrophe.

The host, and guests, focused on terms that sound great like sustainability, circularity, advanced recycling, innovation, roadmap, and value chain. But they so conveniently defined those terms so they are compatible with growth of the market and use of petrochemical derivatives.

I’m not convinced that’s this isn’t just a lengthy infomercial for that industry. Or, more pointedly, if that industry can be reformed in a way that is compatible with a habitable future on this planet.

Every solution that gets us to a future with less carbon in the air needs to be on the table. Circularity, a fancy word for recycling, and sustainability, need to be effective tools towards those ends. However, we need to curtail the oil/gas/petrochemical industries and their extractive practices, divisive politics, and reckless business practices.

Recycling existing plastic, even by ‘advanced’ means, is not going to get us there; we need to make more dramatic changes. Furthermore, the chemical treatment of plastic refuse, or advanced recycling, is not as innocent sounding as they would might hope.

I want these people to focus up and stop trying to sell us on their industry. When they do that they derail actual environmentalism for people who are trying to engage from diverse angles. There’s more than this, and this industry needs to be a part of the solution, do better.