My recycling bin is filling up fast these days. With plastic. No matter what I buy, it seems to come swathed in plastic. Broccoli. Carrots. Lettuce. Bottles of dishwashing liquid, too, are bundled into a plastic bag that I’m not really sure is recyclable.

More than ever, I feel as if plastic wrappings are being thrust on me. Despite using fabric reusable shopping bags, way too much one-use-only plastic comes home with me.

Plastic manufacturers say they’re responding to customer demand, but really, when I demand fresh fruit and vegetables, I am not asking for the plastic bags they come in. I just want the contents. I’d be happy to supply my own containers.

So when I heard Beth Gardiner interviewed on CBC the other week, I listened up. She’s the author of a new book, Plastic Inc., that lays out what’s behind the plastic pandemic. She pointed out that plastics are a product of the oil industry. Leaders of these giant corporations have been very open about feeling under threat by a reduced demand for fossil fuels.

Our reliance on oil has grown expensive, and risky. People are opting for renewable energy and electric vehicles, especially in the context of the US-Iran war and the Strait of Hormuz bottleneck. So, say leaders of the oil industries, their strategy is to, instead, push plastics on consumers. Indeed, plastic, too, is a petroleum product.

That’s the context for the grand effort to recycle plastic. Gardiner noted that it’s hard for recycled plastic to compete economically with virgin plastic. Also, for the recycling process to be viable, the plastic has to be well sorted. If different kinds of plastics are thrown in together, it makes recycling harder. Too much goes into the landfill.

And who’s laughing their way to the bank? Who but the companies who have created the problem. While local municipalities and citizens foot the bill for recycling.

Here Gardiner proposed a strategy I could go for: The world needs to shift the burden for disposing of used plastic back onto the producers of plastic. It’s called «extended producers’ responsibilities,» a law to force plastic producers to deal with recycling.

Plastic Inc. has been compared to Rachel Carson’s The Silent Spring (1962), which rang alarm bells about how pesticides such as DDT damage nature. Many say it launched the modern environmental movement.

May Gardiner’s book do the same, about plastics!

Rachel writes from Newport.