John Oliver Is Wrong: Recycling Is All About Individual Responsibility
Today's guest blog, authored by NERC Board Member Chaz Miller, was originally published by Waste 360. The original post can be found here.
You may have seen John Oliver’s March 22 “Last Week Tonight” program about plastics and recycling. The show was a mishmash of fact, opinion and misstatement that painted a desolate picture about plastic recycling in particular and recycling in general. Oliver blamed the plastics industry for convincing us that our failure to recycle is our fault. Instead, he asserted, “the real behavior change has to come from manufacturers themselves”.
I agree with some of what he is saying. Producers can create better markets by using more recycled content in their products. Producers can make their products more easily recyclable.…