On this edition of Your Call's One Planet Series, we're discussing the growing plastic pollution crisis and a ProPublica investigation about a chemical recycling process known as pyrolysis. The world churns out 430 million metric tons of plastic each year.
According to ProPublica, businesses that rely on plastic production, like fossil fuel and chemical companies, have worked since the 1980s to spin the pollution crisis as a failure of waste management — one that can be solved with recycling. Now, the industry is heralding nothing short of a miracle: an “advanced” type of recycling known as pyrolysis — “pyro” means fire and “lysis” means separation. It uses heat to break plastic all the way down to its molecular building blocks.
Guest:
Lisa Song, investigative reporter with ProPublica
Resources:
ProPublica: Selling a Mirage
Environmental Health News: Chemical recycling “a dangerous deception” for solving plastic pollution: Report
