A study by the Centre for Climate Integrity found that Companies knew for decades recycling was not viable but promoted it regardless,  

Plastic producers have known for more than 30 years that recycling is not an economically or technically feasible plastic waste management solution. That has not stopped them from promoting it, according to a new report.

“The companies lied,” said Richard Wiles, president of fossil-fuel accountability advocacy group the Centre for Climate Integrity (CCI), which published the report. “It’s time to hold them accountable for the damage they’ve caused.”

Plastic, which is made from oil and gas, is notoriously difficult to recycle. Doing so requires meticulous sorting, since most of the thousands of chemically distinct varieties of plastic cannot be recycled together. That renders an already pricey process even more expensive. Another challenge: the material degrades each time it is reused, meaning it can generally only be reused once or twice.

it is alleged that the industry has known for decades about these existential challenges, but obscured that information in its marketing campaigns, the report states.

Single-use plastics

In the 1950s, plastic producers came up with an idea to ensure a continually growing market for their products: disposability.

“They knew if they focused on single-use [plastics] people would buy and buy and buy,” said Davis Allen, investigative researcher at the CCI and the report’s lead author.

At a 1956 industry conference, the Society of the Plastics Industry, a trade group, reportedly told producers to focus on “low cost, big volume and expendability” and to aim for materials to end up “in the garbage wagon”.

The Society of Plastics is now known as the Plastics Industry Association. “As is typical, instead of working together towards actual solutions to address plastic waste, groups like CCI choose to level political attacks instead of constructive solutions,” Matt Seaholm, president and CEO of the trade group, said in an emailed response to the report.

Over the following decades, it is claimed the industry told the public that plastics can easily be tossed into landfills or burned in garbage incinerators. But in the 1980s, as municipalities began considering bans on grocery bags and other plastic products, the industry began promoting a new solution: recycling.

Recycling campaigns

it is alleged in the report that the industry has long known that plastics recycling is not economically or practically viable. An internal 1986 report from the trade association the Vinyl Institute noted that “recycling cannot be considered a permanent solid waste solution [to plastics], as it merely prolongs the time until an item is disposed of”.

In 1989, the founding director of the Vinyl Institute told attendees of a trade conference: “Recycling cannot go on indefinitely and does not solve the solid waste problem.”