CBS News recently published a story about plastics recycling, which focused on a Houston facility that failed fire safety inspections and may be storing plastics without proper permits. The story notes that it’s a partnership between Inside Climate News (ICN), a climate activist publication that aims to stop consumption of petroleum energy and products. The segment was authored by an ICN reporter. While the article notes this partnership, it provides no mention of ICN’s funding or political agenda.
The report documents the facility’s inspection failures and lack of permits, which it then spins into a narrative about how plastics have an overall negative impact and the difficulties in addressing those impacts through recycling. The article cites a study by two anti-fossil fuel groups, Beyond Plastics and the International Pollutants Elimination Network, which found that chemical recycling hasn’t been successful commercially.
“Critics argue that chemical recycling is more of an unproven marketing play so plastic production can keep growing rather than a real fix for a global crisis. They cite, for example, harm across the plastics lifecycle from oil and gas drilling to plastic production to plastic waste in rivers and oceans to micro- and nano-plastics in blood vessels,” the article states.
Funding
Inside Climate News is funded by several anti-fossil fuel organizations, including the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Rockefeller Family Fund, the Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, the Park Foundation, the Wallace Global Fund, and the New York Community Trust. Rockefeller Brothers Fund program director Michael Northrop, sits on the ICN board of directors. According to ICN, Northrup provided the seed grant upon which ICN was founded in 2007. […]
— Read More: justthenews.com
