大石油公司误导公众相信塑料可以回收利用

大石油公司误导公众相信塑料可以回收利用

Landfill workers bury all plastic except soda bottles and milk jugs at Rogue Disposal & Recycling in southern Oregon.

在南俄勒冈州，垃圾填埋场的工作人员将所有的塑料都埋在垃圾处理和回收站，除了汽水瓶和牛奶罐。

Laura Leebrick, a manager at Rogue Disposal & Recycling in southern Oregon, is standing on the end of its landfill watching an avalanche of plastic trash pour out of a semitrailer: containers, bags, packaging, strawberry containers, yogurt cups.

劳拉·利布里克是南俄勒冈州垃圾处理与回收站的经理，她站在垃圾填埋场的尽头，看着一堆塑料垃圾从一辆半拖车中倾倒出来:容器、袋子、包装袋、草莓容器、酸奶杯。

None of this plastic will be turned into new plastic things. All of it is buried.

这些塑料都不会变成新的塑料制品。所有的一切都被掩埋了。

"To me that felt like it was a betrayal of the public trust," she said. "I had been lying to people ... unwittingly."

“在我看来，这是对公众信任的背叛，”她说。“我一直在不知不觉地对人们撒谎。”

Rogue, like most recycling companies, had been sending plastic trash to China, but when China shut its doors two years ago, Leebrick scoured the U.S. for buyers. She could find only someone who wanted white milk jugs. She sends the soda bottles to the state.

像大多数回收公司一样，垃圾处理与回收站一直在向中国运送塑料垃圾，但当中国两年前关闭大门时，利布里克开始在美国寻找买家。她只能找到一个想要白牛奶罐的人。她把汽水瓶送到州政府。

But when Leebrick tried to tell people the truth about burying all the other plastic, she says people didn't want to hear it.

但当利布里克试图告诉人们关于掩埋所有其他塑料的真相时，她说人们不想听。

"I remember the first meeting where I actually told a city council that it was costing more to recycle than it was to dispose of the same material as garbage," she says, "and it was like heresy had been spoken in the room: You're lying. This is gold. We take the time to clean it, take the labels off, separate it and put it here. It's gold. This is valuable."

“我记得在第一次会议上，我对市议会说，回收同样的材料比处理垃圾花费更多，”她说，“这就像在房间里说了异端邪说:你在撒谎。这是黄金。我们花时间清理它，取下标签，把它分开，然后放在这里。这是黄金。这是有价值的。”

But it's not valuable, and it never has been. And what's more, the makers of plastic — the nation's largest oil and gas companies — have known this all along, even as they spent millions of dollars telling the American public the opposite.

但它没有价值，也从来没有。更重要的是，塑料制造商——美国最大的石油和天然气公司——一直都知道这一点，即使他们花费数百万美元告诉美国公众相反的情况。

NPR and PBS Frontline spent months digging into internal industry documents and interviewing top former officials. 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 — all while making billions of dollars selling the world new plastic.

美国国家公共广播电台(NPR)和美国公共广播电台(PBS)的《前线》花了数月时间挖掘行业内部文件，并采访了前高级官员。我们发现，该行业向公众兜售一个明知行不通的想法——即大部分塑料可以被回收，而且将会被回收——与此同时，向全世界出售新塑料，赚取数十亿美元。

The industry's awareness that recycling wouldn't keep plastic out of landfills and the environment dates to the program's earliest days, we found. "There is serious doubt that [recycling plastic] can ever be made viable on an economic basis," one industry insider wrote in a 1974 speech.

我们发现，塑料行业意识到回收不会让塑料远离垃圾填埋场和环境，这种意识可以追溯到该计划的最早时期。一位业内人士在1974年的一次演讲中写道:“人们严重怀疑(回收塑料)能否在经济上可行。”

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.

然而，该行业花费了数百万美元告诉人们要回收利用，因为正如一位前业内人士告诉美国国家公共电台(NPR)的那样，出售回收利用就是出售塑料，即使这不是真的。

"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, told NPR.

“如果公众认为回收是有效的，那么他们就不会那么关心环境了，”塑料工业协会前主席拉里·托马斯告诉NPR。

In response, industry representative Steve Russell, until recently the vice president of plastics for the trade group the American Chemistry Council, said the industry has never intentionally misled the public about recycling and is committed to ensuring all plastic is recycled.

作为回应，行业代表史蒂夫·罗素表示，该行业从未在回收问题上有意误导公众，而是致力于确保所有塑料都得到回收。罗素直到最近才担任行业组织美国化学理事会塑料副总裁。