PBS NewsHour and SciShow explain the difficulties of recycling plastic and plastic pollution

I'm returning to another evergreen topic on the last day of the blogging year, plastic. I begin with PBS NewsHour reporting The plastic industry knowingly pushed recycling myth for decades, new report finds.

The world produces an average of 430 million metric tons of plastic each year. The United States alone produces tens of millions of tons of plastic waste annually. Yet on average, only about 5 to 6 percent of plastic in the U.S. is recycled. NPR correspondent Michael Copley joins Ali Rogin to discuss a new report on the plastic industry’s tactics to push recycling and avoid regulation.

This is looking like what the fossil fuel industry said in private about climate change and the tobacco industry about lung cancer, both of which turned into major scandals and legal actions. It parallels the story about Keep America Beautiful told in Adam Ruins Going Green: Student Sustainability Video Festival 79 and Vox on going green by reducing waste for Earth Day 2018, that it began as a corporate effort to shift responsibility for waste from the companies that made products to the consumers that used them and disposed of them. That worked for decades, but people are starting to catch on, thanks to reporting like this and the Emmy-winning "Plastic Time Bomb."

I'm a scientist and educator, as well as an activist, so I'm sharing SciShow explaining Why We're So Bad at Recycling Plastic.

Plastic is quickly becoming a problem and we're eager to point fingers, but honestly, the reason there's so much plastic everywhere isn't just because of human negligence.

Hosted by: Stefan Chin

So that's the science explaining the difficulties of plastic recycling and disposal. The result is that a lot of plastic can't be recycled and the rest isn't just landfilled or incinerated, but becomes pollution. SciShow just uploaded a video about how that reaches the literal ends of the Earth, The Arctic Is Drowning in Plastic.

Many people picture the Arctic as a pristine icy wilderness. But when it comes to microplastics, it's one of the most polluted places on Eart[h.]

Hosted by: Reid Reimers (he/him)

It's not just the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Plastic is everywhere.

The ubiquity of plastic is one of the topics I ask my students in the Worksheet for 'Treasures of the Earth: Power', which I'm showing this week. Here are two of the questions:

15. What uses are there for plastic? Name five uses or products.

The video lists cosmetic cases, chairs, phones, clothes, and toilet seats, or if it doesn't, I'll accept them as answers. The video shows lots more, including bottles and bags.

16. Why is plastic a challenge for disposal?

The video says that plastic doesn't break down and burning it creates greenhouse gases. In the way paper decomposes, it doesn't, although it does break down physically. Students also point out that the sheer variety of plastic complicates recycling. That's the point of the second video above, but it's not part of "Treasures of the Earth: Power." Still, it's true.

Students can also use plastic as an example of some of Commoner's Laws, Everything is connected to everything else, everything must go somewhere (there is no away), and there is no free lunch along with climate change.

This concludes today's episode of stories I tell my students. Stay tuned for Happy International Day of Nowruz and the 13th birthday of Crazy Eddie's Motie News on tomorrow and World Water Day on Friday. My blog will be a teenager!