Jan Dell is a former chemical engineer who has spent years telling an inconvenient truth about plastics. 'So many people, they see the recyclable label, and they put it in the recycle bin,' she said. 'But the vast majority of plastics are not recycled.'About 48 million tons of plastic waste is generated in the U.S. each year; only 5 to 6 percent of it is actually recycled, according to the Department of Energy. The rest ends up in landfills or is burned.
Allen showed us documents and meeting notes they obtained from public archives, and from a former staff member of the American Plastics Council. 'What we see in here is a widespread knowledge that plastics recycling was not working,' he said. At a trade conference in Florida in 1989, an industry leader told attendees, 'Recycling cannot go on indefinitely, and does not solve the solid waste problem.