Beth Gardiner, environmental journalist, is at it again. Her last book, Choked, was about air pollution. In her latest, Plastic Inc.: The Secret History and Shocking Future of Big Oil’s Biggest Bet, she tackles the monsooning global plastics crisis created by the oil industry as a safeguard against failing revenue. It’s the riveting story of how we as a culture got to a point where people seem to think nothing of throwing out single-use plastics many times a day. Plastic now clogs our waterways, and endless studies demonstrate its wide-ranging and serious health impacts. Microplastics are now found in every part of the human body from our brains to our testicles!
In Plastic Inc., Beth describes how we got here. Her nefarious protagonist is Big Oil and Gas. Industry has left no stone unturned to convince people to buy more and more plastic we don’t even need, to avoid cleaning up their own messes, and to hide information about everything from health impacts to the fact that recycling doesn’t actually work. While this is an industry secret living in plain sight that has been going on for decades, Beth weaves the unbelievable story in a compelling way—and, uniquely, she avoids telling consumers what to do to fix the problem.
“When I learned that industry intended to double, and eventually triple, the amount of plastic it produces, I decided it was important to shift the lens and try to focus people’s attention on the companies that have been pushing plastic into our lives for so long, rather than our own role as individuals,” she explains.
Tell Congress: Protect Families From the Plastics and Petrochemical Industry
We spoke with Beth about her new book and more. Read on.
To your mind, what is the link between your two books—between air pollution and plastic?
I wrote Choked because as a journalist I thought air pollution was a really under-covered story, given the huge impact it has on the health and lives of so many people. It felt like there was a gap I could fill by reporting on it.
Plastic Inc. came from a similar instinct. Most of the coverage of plastic—and therefore so much of how we all think about this issue—focuses either on where it ends up or how we can each use less of it in our own lives. And we generally hear very little about where it comes from, which is of course the fossil fuel industry. While so many of us are worrying about plastic’s proliferation into every corner of modern life, huge oil companies like ExxonMobil and Saudi Aramco have been pouring billions of dollars into plans to make more plastic, not less, in the years to come.
Why do we have a plastic crisis?
In the years after World War II, industry very deliberately began looking for ways to sell more plastic. The oil and petrochemical companies producing it, packaging companies turning it into bottles and bags, and the food, drink, and consumer products companies using those containers—they all saw dollar signs in the then-novel idea of disposability.
Coca-Cola, for example, used to operate an enormous system of reuse. In the late 1940s, bottles were sometimes returned and refilled 50 times or more. For those making the bottles, shifting to single-use meant they could sell 50 for every one they’d sold before. And Coke and its peers could push the cost of dealing with empties off their own books and onto the public. We’re still paying the price, in taxes that fund trash collection and recycling.
That’s just one example, but it’s a great illustration of the reality that we as consumers didn’t choose single-use—it was foisted on us by hugely wealthy and powerful corporations that saw they could make money from it.
What should people know about plastic and how it relates to the climate crisis?
Before I started working on this book, I always thought of climate change and plastic pollution as two separate crises—parallel, maybe, but distinct. Now I understand that they’re very much interconnected. Directly, because making and disposing of plastic has a hefty carbon footprint. Petrochemical plants that turn oil and gas by-products into plastic are so energy-intensive they often have their own gas-fired power plants on site. And a lot of plastic ends up getting incinerated, which, since it’s made from fossil fuels, releases greenhouse gases too.
On top of that, because plastic gives oil and gas companies an additional revenue stream, it offers them a way for them to keep drilling even if demand for their fuels eventually starts declining. And that’s exactly what they plan to do. So plastic threatens to help perpetuate an incredibly destructive business model.
And what about public health?
As far as public health, I was shocked to learn how profoundly the hormone-disrupting chemicals in plastics can affect our bodies. It goes well beyond the reproductive-system problems we most intuitively associate with hormonal imbalances. Chemicals in plastic have been linked to elevated risk of everything from heart attacks and strokes to neurodevelopmental issues like ADHD and autism. And scientists are only beginning to understand the spread of microplastics through our bodies, but what they already know is very worrying.
What do you hope readers will take away from your book?
I hope they’ll stop thinking about plastic as a matter of personal responsibility and reframe it instead as an issue of corporate and political accountability. So many of us feel a sense of guilt around all the plastic in our lives and our trash cans. I think it’s time to let go of that and see clearly who’s actually created this mess. That’s the oil and petrochemical industries—not us as individuals.
Who are your favorite climate writers?
Elizabeth Kolbert tops the list. In large part, that’s because her writing is so good that even when the subject matter is heavy—and I appreciate her refusal to sugarcoat the reality we now face—the experience of reading her books and articles somehow manages to be enjoyable. It helps that I’m someone who loves a well-crafted sentence.
In email newsletters, I think Emily Atkin (HEATED) and Amy Westervelt (Drilled) are both really important climate journalists, and their focus on who is responsible for the crises we now face (spoiler: Big Oil and those who aid and abet it) has helped shape my own work in recent years.
What do you still indulge in—your greatest extravagance—despite the climate crisis?
Flying, definitely. I’m an American who’s lived in the UK for 25 years (my husband is British), and I go back and forth a lot, to see family and friends in the U.S. I also fly for work—Plastic Inc. took me to Dubai, Indonesia, Belgium, Texas, and Arizona, among other destinations. And more broadly, I’ve always loved going to new places.
What do you go without as a result of the climate crisis?
I eat a lot less meat these days. That’s less a decision I’ve made myself because of the climate crisis and more something that’s happened because my daughter is vegetarian. But her reasons are partly environmental, so I guess her good influence has rubbed off on me!
Tell Congress: Protect Families From the Plastics and Petrochemical Industry