Plastic output will double in the coming decades. This new book traces how
Every trip to the store, drink at a restaurant, or discard of a recyclable item can feel like a small moral referendum. Bring the reusable bag. Skip the straw. Rinse the yogurt cup. For years, that was how Beth Gardiner thought about plastic, too: a matter of personal responsibility. Then, she came across a number that stopped her cold.
Just under a decade ago, the London-based environmental journalist read that oil giants such as Exxon and Shell were planning to invest as much as $180 billion in new plastic production in the United States alone, with projections to increase output by as much as 40% in the coming decades. The revelation鈥攖hat even as consumers tried to cut back, the industry was preparing to double down on single-use packaging鈥攂ecame the seed of Gardiner鈥檚 book, 鈥.鈥 The years that followed took her from Gulf Coast petrochemical corridors to recycling facilities and corporate boardrooms in a bid to better understand how petrochemical and consumer-goods companies built an economy around disposable plastic; that now underpins so much of everyday life.
In this article from , Gardiner speaks about her research tracing how petrochemical companies became central to the future of fossil fuels, how litter campaigns reframed plastic as a consumer problem rather than a production one, and why she believes the real leverage lies in policies that shift responsibility back to the companies making the material in the first place.
Atmos: What set you on the path to reporting and writing 鈥淧lastic Inc.鈥?
Beth Gardiner: I was always one of those people who brought reusable bags to the grocery store and felt a little guilty if I forgot them and had to use plastic. I carried a water bottle, and hated throwing bottles out or dealing with excess packaging. That鈥檚 just sort of me. And I know a lot of people feel that same distress about how much plastic is in our lives. That was the background.
Then, about seven or eight years ago, I read an saying that huge companies like Exxon and Shell were planning to pour $180 or $200 billion into making more plastic in the U.S., with projections to increase production by 40% or 50%. That felt like a gut punch. Here I was, like so many others, trying to use less plastic, and meanwhile, there was this massive tide of corporate power pushing in the opposite direction. That specific article linked this surge to fracking, which has driven a plastic production boom in the U.S., but it鈥檚 part of a bigger global picture. Plastic production has been and is projected to continue increasing on that same trajectory.
I didn鈥檛 literally wake up the next day and start writing. But when I think about it, that moment, more than anything, was the origin of the book. Because, as an environmental writer, that gap touched on something I find so pervasive in people鈥檚 understanding of environmental issues. When we talk about climate change or air pollution鈥攁s I did in my first book, 鈥淐hoked鈥濃攑eople ask, 鈥淲hat can I do? How can we fix this?鈥 That impulse is good, but it also reflects how much we focus on our own actions or the actions of people around us. Our carbon footprints, our flights, our diets. Meanwhile, the systems we live in are shaped by gigantic, wealthy corporations.
Plastic makes that dynamic especially tangible. We see it when we open our Amazon package, we hold it, we throw it away. And for so many people鈥攁nd I hear this when I talk to friends and people I know about this book鈥攊t鈥檚 so distressing. But that visibility can distract us from the bigger question: Who is driving the problem in the first place?
Atmos: In the book, you write that oil and petrochemical giants are 鈥渉iding in plain sight.鈥 Given how prolific plastic is in every part of our life, how have they managed to stay out of the public story for so long?
Gardiner: Part of the reason, I think, is that the companies at the center of plastic production鈥攖he oil and petrochemical firms鈥攁ren鈥檛 consumer-facing. You鈥檙e not buying a plastic bottle from INEOS or ExxonMobil. You鈥檙e buying it from a supermarket, or from Coke or Pepsi. So when the public does focus on corporate responsibility for plastic, it tends to land on retailers like Amazon and supermarkets, or on consumer brands, like the companies selling shampoo, snacks, or bottled drinks, rather than on the Exxons and Shells supplying the raw materials.
With climate change, people are now used to thinking of big oil as the villain. With plastic, there鈥檚 more distance. And these companies aren鈥檛 exactly advertising their role. , or petrochemical-focused giants like INEOS or Dow, these are all major plastic makers. But they don鈥檛 need a public profile because they aren鈥檛 selling directly to us.
There鈥檚 also the broader issue that we don鈥檛 always see the system we live in because we鈥檙e so accustomed to it. Plastic can feel especially disconnected from its origins. I鈥檝e been writing about climate and oil for 15 or 20 years, and even I had a moment of realizing I didn鈥檛 quite know where plastic 鈥渃omes from鈥 in any intuitive way. I could look at a table, piece of paper, or cardboard and think: tree. But a toothbrush or a water bottle doesn鈥檛 cue the same mental link.
Most of us have lived our entire lives surrounded by plastic. Its presence has been growing and growing for decades. And because it鈥檚 just so much part of our world and our surroundings, we don鈥檛 always question it or stop to ask how it got here in the first place.
Atmos: How crucial is plastic to the oil industry鈥檚 future, really? And can you explain why that is?
Gardiner: Plastic has become increasingly important to oil and gas companies for a few reasons. First, the basic trajectory is relentless. Since the 1940s and 1950s, when plastic began to take hold in consumer life, . If you project that curve forward, which is essentially the industry鈥檚 plan, global plastic output is on track to .
The second reason is profit. A lot of plastics are made from chemicals that can be byproducts of oil and gas extraction, and plastic gives companies a way to monetize materials that might otherwise be treated as waste. Once firms invest billions to build petrochemical plants that turn those feedstocks into plastic, the incentive is to keep those plants running at full capacity to recoup the investment.
But there is also a newer pressure shaping this shift. Even the largest oil and gas companies can see, as well as anyone, that their long-term future is threatened by No. 1, climate action, and No. 2, by the fact that they are being economically outperformed by clean energy. Solar has today become among the . Electric vehicles are scaling quickly, with China cranking them out at , whether it鈥檚 buses, cars, or e-bikes. That threatens the industry鈥檚 ability to continue profiting from the sale of oil and gas as fuel. Petrochemicals, including plastics, are therefore becoming a larger and more strategic source of profit. Companies are even retooling refineries so that a greater share of each barrel of crude is converted into petrochemicals instead of gasoline or diesel. In other words, plastics help make each barrel of oil or each unit of methane gas more profitable for these companies.
So the push for plastic reflects both the industry鈥檚 modus operandi鈥攎ore production means more money鈥攁nd a growing anxiety about a future in which demand for fossil fuels as fuel may flatten and eventually decline. The industry鈥檚 response has never been, 鈥淟et鈥檚 jump into solar and wind and electric vehicles.鈥 It鈥檚 not profitable enough to sell renewable energy. Their answer has been to continue drilling oil and gas and find ways to make that stay profitable.
Atmos: When you look at the numbers, where is the growth concentrated?
Gardiner: If you ask the industry, it will say the big drive is rising demand in lower- and middle-income countries; that consumers in the Global South are getting wealthier and want the same goods the Global North has, like refrigerators, phones, laptops, cars, packaged products. There is some truth to that. But it鈥檚 also true that multinationals are aggressively expanding disposable packaging in those markets鈥攑ushed by petrochemical producers, major brands, retailers, and food and beverage companies. With the Global North already saturated with plastic, the Global South has become the .
It鈥檚 also worth questioning the premise that plastic expansion is simply demand-driven. Plastic has an unusual ability to invert the normal relationship between supply and demand. The industry says, 鈥淐ustomers are demanding plastic, we are just fulfilling that demand,鈥 but it鈥檚 not quite like that. Plastic is produced in tremendous volumes at extremely low cost, and that cheapness makes it easy to flood markets and invent new uses for it.
Most consumers aren鈥檛 asking for plastic in the first place. When you buy bananas, you鈥檙e buying bananas, not plastic wrap. When you order from Amazon, you鈥檙e not requesting layers of packaging. When you eat at a restaurant, you鈥檙e not demanding throwaway cups and cutlery, even if you鈥檙e eating in. Those choices are enabled by a material that is very cheap, and by a business model that rewards volume. Low price, high throughput. The more plastic producers can push into the system, the more it gets adopted as default. That鈥檚 why the problem can鈥檛 be understood as a matter of individual consumer choice. It鈥檚 fundamentally supply-driven, which means regulation and accountability have to focus on producers, not on consumers.
Atmos: Even so, as you describe in the book, litter campaigns have largely shifted that responsibility onto consumers. Can you explain how those public narratives and accountability structures around plastic were changed, and who benefited?
Gardiner: It鈥檚 almost the prototype for modern greenwashing. Those litter campaigns succeeded so well in confusing our understanding of what the problem was and who was driving it. One thing they did was minimize the issue. The message these companies wanted the public to accept was that 鈥渢oo much plastic鈥 wasn鈥檛 the problem; the problem was where it ended up. And that鈥檚 still the messaging around ocean plastics today, that the issue is improper disposal.
That鈥檚 not to say litter isn鈥檛 a real problem. Of course it is. But the campaigns shrank the story as if litter was the only problem. And then, of course, they also shifted the blame. It鈥檚 not us, the big companies who are selling and profiting from plastic, who are responsible for this crisis, it鈥檚 you, the individual, or a few irresponsible individuals, who aren鈥檛 managing it properly. In that way, they managed to drape themselves in civic-mindedness while pushing responsibility onto all of us.
Meanwhile, these companies have routinely fought efforts to make them pay for the waste they create. Take the shift from returnable glass bottles to disposable packaging as an example. When Coke sold drinks in refillable glass bottles, companies had to collect, clean, reuse, and resell them. That鈥檚 expensive for them because it requires labor, equipment, and logistics. They would much rather sell it in a plastic bottle, which then becomes the consumer鈥檚 problem or the problem of local governments. In this scenario, consumers are charged with managing and disposing of these products through trash collectors or through local taxes.
So the campaigns changed how people talked about plastic, yes, but they also reframed plastic as a waste-management problem rather than a production problem, and as a public responsibility rather than a corporate one. Decades later, that logic still shapes the debate: People ask what consumers should do, or how municipalities can raise recycling rates, instead of why companies are pushing so much disposable plastic into the marketplace in the first place.
And by the way, it isn鈥檛 cheaper. We鈥檙e just the ones paying the price difference. When companies moved from returnable bottles to throwaways, whether that鈥檚 in aluminum cans or plastic bottles, consumers ended up paying more at the register and again as taxpayers to handle the waste. It was a tremendous shift of both blame and responsibility, and a fundamental reframe of what the problem was in the first place.
Atmos: It鈥檚 startling when you put it that way, and when you think about the long shadow that the plastics industry casts over so many other sectors. From your perspective, after so much reporting in this space, if the goal is to reduce production, which policy tools have the most leverage?
Gardiner: I鈥檓 not a policy expert; I鈥檓 a journalist. But the tool you hear advocates return to most often is extended producer responsibility, or EPR. It鈥檚 already been enacted to different degrees and in different ways in different countries and in a couple of U.S. states, as well.
The idea with EPR is to reverse the dynamic we鈥檝e been talking about, which is that these companies have shifted the costs of waste onto the public and off their own books. EPR puts responsibility back on producers by requiring consumer goods companies to help fund what happens to their packaging when it becomes waste. That money can help pay for recycling programs, waste collection, and waste management鈥攁nd the expense is also meant to create an incentive for companies to use less plastic in the first place.
The industry has fought EPR for decades, and when it looks inevitable, it often tries to shape the details so the policy appears meaningful without forcing real change. With measures like this, the devil is in the details and in these tiny definitions of exactly how a new system is going to work.
Beyond EPR, there are other measures. One that was part of the Global Plastics Treaty conversation鈥攚hich, if I understand correctly, 鈥攊s tighter regulation to deal with the health effects of the chemicals used in plastic, many of which are pretty well understood now. The European Union , like incentivizing reusability by encouraging or requiring retailers to devote space to refill systems and reusable containers. It has also taken steps to require reuse targets for certain kinds of packaging, including business-to-business shipping and some e-commerce packaging.
What history shows is that voluntary corporate promises don鈥檛 get you very far. Companies understand public concern, so they say the right things; sometimes they鈥檒l shave off small amounts of plastic. But meaningful change tends to come from mandatory rules, whether it鈥檚 local, state, or national policy, or coordinated action through transnational blocs like the EU.
There are also narrower tools, like bans on specific items, fees on bags, and restrictions on certain forms of packaging. Those aren鈥檛 the whole answer, but they can be a start, and they can shift norms by showing that alternatives are workable. But broadly speaking, it really comes down to one principle: putting the onus back on producers.
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