https://www.npr.org/2020/09/11/897692090/how-big-oil-misled-the-public-into-... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_garbage_patch " We found that the industry sold the public on an idea it knew wouldn't work -- that the majority of plastic could be, and would be, recycled... "There is serious doubt that [recycling plastic] can ever be made viable on an economic basis," one industry insider wrote in a 1974 speech. Yet the industry spent millions telling people to recycle, because, as one former top industry insider told NPR, selling recycling sold plastic, even if it wasn't true. "If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment," Larry Thomas, former president of the Society of the Plastics Industry, known today as the Plastics Industry Association and one of the industry's most powerful trade groups in Washington. Less than 10 percent of plastic has ever been recycled. But the public has known little about it. "