Paid TikTok Influencers, a Dennis Quaid “Documentary,” and Other Ways the Plastic Industry Tries to Mislead You
A trove of internal industry documents offers an in-depth look inside a multiyear covert campaign to convince Americans single-use plastic bottles are sustainable.
Industry documents obtained by Fieldnotes and reported on by the New York Times this morning detail a covert, multiyear effort led by some of the largest petrochemical and plastic companies in the world to mislead the public into believing disposable water bottles and other single-use containers are far more likely to be recycled than they actually are. Central to the coordinated effort, which began in earnest in 2018 and has become even more aggressive in recent years: obscuring, and even outright hiding, that the corporations are behind the effort to begin with.
The deceptive practices—which include paying TikTok influencers to parrot industry talking points, running Facebook ads that violate Meta ad standards, attempting to “newsjack” Olympic coverage, and hiring an aged Hollywood actor to host an infomercial designed to pass as PBS programming—are detailed in internal strategy memos, confidential PowerPoint presentations, and other communications from the National Association for PET Container Resources (NAPCOR) and its allies dating back more than a half decade. Together, the material depicts a campaign drawn up to stem what the industry saw as a rising “tide of anti-plastic sentiment” and that features messaging the group is—at this very moment—using in Busan, South Korea, in an attempt to influence the UN negotiations underway there on a global treaty to curb plastic pollution (aka INC-5).
(A slide from a presentation given to NAPCOR’s Communications & Issues Management Committee in the summer 2024)
Founded nearly 40 years ago, NAPCOR represents companies up and down the plastic packaging chain that deal in polyethylene terephthalate, or PET, as the plastic used to make soda bottles and takeout clamshell containers is more commonly known. Among the nearly 70 corporations that pay dues for the right to have a say in the group’s strategy:
INEOS, a multinational conglomerate that acquired BP’s petchem business several years ago;
Amcor, a global supplier of plastic food and beverage packaging for everything from soda to sauce;
Dart Container Corporation, maker of the Solo cups ubiquitous on American college campuses;
And other corporate members, including the Eastman Chemical Company, Husky, and Sidel.
While NAPCOR focuses on promoting the use of PET packaging specifically, its efforts often overlap and align with a host of similar groups representing other petrochemical and plastic companies with their own vested interests in selling consumers on the benefits of recycling. Among those NAPCOR boasts internally of having developed “industry relationships” with, for example, are the Plastics Industry Association (PLASTICS), which is lobbying to vastly expand the definition of what is “recyclable,” and the Recycling Partnership, which is funded in part by ExxonMobil—the target of a lawsuit from California alleging a “decades-long campaign of deception” about the effectiveness of recycling.
Visit the (NEW!) Fieldnotes site to read the full investigation, view the underlying documents, and find out just how much Dennis Quaid’s production company charges to make a “meaningful” documentary about a subject of your choosing.