Paid influencers on TikTok. An infomercial hosted by Dennis Quaid. Pushback against the Olympics’ single-use plastic ban.
A trove of documents leaked from an influential industry group shows how some of the world’s largest petrochemical and plastics companies have been waging a campaign to push back against a “tide of anti-plastic sentiment” — especially among young people concerned about the environment.
The industry group, the National Association for PET Container Resources, or NAPCOR, worked to deliberately obscure its connection to the campaign and make its content “authentic and from the creators’ viewpoints,” the documents show.
PET stands for polyethylene terephthalate, the plastic used to make single-use soda bottles and clamshell containers.
The corporate strategizing laid out in the documents provides a behind-the-scenes look at a battle being waged over the future of plastic. Nations are gathering in Busan, South Korea this week to hammer out details of a global plastic treaty that might tackle pollution at its source, by limiting its production — an approach that the plastic industry has vehemently opposed.
The campaign’s messaging was at times misleading. One paid TikTok influencer who posts about her family’s life on the road in an R.V. claimed that “PET bottles are a closed-loop, zero-waste system.”
In fact, despite being recyclable, PET remains a major source of plastic waste and microplastics, those extremely small pieces of plastic debris. According to NAPCOR’s annual report, less than 30 percent of PET plastic bottles were recycled in the United States in 2022, a rate that has remained largely unchanged for the past decade. Plastic that is not recycled is incinerated or ends up in landfills or the environment.
The more than 400 pages of internal memos, presentations and other industry communications were obtained by Fieldnotes, a watchdog group that focuses on the oil and gas industry, and reviewed by The New York Times.
NAPCOR declined to answer detailed questions about the documents. The group represents nearly 70 petrochemicals, plastics and recycling companies, including INEOS, a conglomerate that acquired BP’s petrochemicals business in 2020; Amcor, a major supplier of plastic bottles to Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Keurig Dr Pepper; Dart, maker of the distinctive red Solo cups popular on American college campuses; and the Eastman Chemical Company, which makes polymers, films and plastics, including recycled plastic.
Laura Stewart, the group’s executive director, said in statement that PET plastic played “a critical role in our lives — from supporting healthy hydration to enabling lifesaving medical devices to disaster recovery and relief efforts.”
She said the association’s goal was “to ensure every PET bottle is recycled, keeping this valuable material in circulation and out of the environment.”
About half a billion tons of plastic are produced each year, more than double the amount from two decades ago, and much of that turns up on coastlines and river banks. Scientists have sounded the alarm on microplastics in the environment and in the human body, as well as the thousands of chemicals in plastic that can leach into food, water and the ecosystem.
As the environmental toll has grown, so has scrutiny of the plastic industry’s messaging. In September, the attorney general of California sued Exxon Mobil, alleging that the fossil fuels giant carried out a “decades-long campaign of deception” that overhyped the promise of recycling, and spawned a plastic pollution crisis.
The outlook for similar cases remains uncertain. A lawsuit filed by the State of New York against PepsiCo, which among other things had alleged that the company’s communications had long obscured the environmental and health risks posed by single-use plastics, was dismissed last month by a New York judge.
Ahead of the plastic negotiations, members of the U.S. Congress and European Parliament urged global leaders to “address the undue influence of plastic-producing corporations” at the talks, noting the large presence of “attendees representing petrochemical industries, which have a vested financial interest in maintaining the status quo.”
Social Media and Plastics
The Stadler family owns two sassy Chihuahuas, Madi and Remi, and has more than 7 million followers on TikTok and Instagram. The Stadlers are among six social media influencers contracted by NAPCOR to post “PET plastics messaging” on their accounts, according to internal documents.
“Today we’re going to the park to have a little picnic,” Serena Stadler says in a May 10 post. “Keeping the dogs hydrated is so important,” she continues, “so I packed plenty of water. I always opt for PET plastics because they’re 100 percent recyclable.” (She does not mention that the actual recycling rate is much lower.)
The six influencers are varied and included an R.V. traveler, a pharmacist-turned-entrepreneur, and an account that promotes financial literacy through trivia games. None of them responded to requests for comment.
Their posts note that they are “sponsored by Positively PET.” None of Positively PET’s social media landing pages mention NAPCOR. A separate landing page carries the group’s logo, however.
“The campaign’s goal is for this content to be authentic and from the creators’ viewpoints,” Lindsay J.K. Nichols, communications director at NAPCOR, said in a June 11 memo addressed to members. Corporate members should stay in the background, she suggested. “While we encourage you to view the content, we ask that you do not engage with it,” she said.
The latest round of the influencer campaign, which ran from May to July 2024, “surpassed our expectations,” Ms. Nichols said in follow-up memos sent to members. The posts made 12.2 million impressions, more than doubling expectations, she said. A survey conducted after the campaign showed it had “led to a significant increase” of positive public perceptions toward the plastics industry.
On Facebook, however, NAPCOR’s lack of disclosure landed its ads in trouble. Between 2020 and 2022, nine ads appeared on Facebook under the “Positively PET” campaign. All nine were removed for violating the platform’s advertising rules, which require organizations placing ads about social issues or politics to include a “Paid for by” disclaimer.
‘Newsjacking’ the Olympics
The Positively PET campaign dates to 2018, when a NAPCOR subcommittee made up of oil giant BP, packaging company Amcor and other members mulled ways to combat what internal documents describe as a “tide of anti-plastic sentiment.” (BP has since sold its petrochemical business to INEOS, which remains a member.)
The association enlisted the public relations firm, Aloysius Butler & Clark, which noted that “voices calling for safe, environmentally conscious packaging alternatives are growing louder.” Its solution: a social media campaign centered around the “Positively PET” slogan.
From the start, the firm recommended that NAPCOR “not be the overall handle for the account,” according to slides prepared for a meeting in November 2018 — “a strategy that is important to make sure consumers don’t feel that they’re being preached to.”
NAPCOR’s tax filings show that the group spent $1.8 million on the PET campaign between 2019 and 2023, the most recent year for which records are publicly available.
This summer, the association jumped into the public debate over the ban on single-use plastic bottles and cups at the Paris Olympics. It was an opportunity to “newsjack,” or insert industry messaging into trending conversations, Ms. Nichols wrote to members in an Aug. 2 memo.
Positively PET would post messages on social media sites using hashtags like #Olympics that said “PET plastic is not single use” and “Recycling, not banning, is the best way to eliminate plastic waste,” the memo said.
A representative for Aloysius Butler & Clark said that the firm helped launch the Positively PET campaign, but did not work on the influencer or Olympics-related content. She said her firm did not encourage NAPCOR to mask its involvement in the campaign.
NAPCOR’s campaign went beyond social media.
In 2023, the group partnered with other plastic industry associations to work with the actor Dennis Quaid on an episode for his Viewpoint With Dennis Quaid TV series. In a style reminiscent of PBS educational programming, the show hails PET bottles as “arguably one of mankind’s greatest inventions.”
It almost exclusively features industry executives, with the exception of Matthew Daum, then director of the School of Packaging at Michigan State University. The school has had close links with the plastics industry. Two years ago, the school received a “transformative gift” of $10.8 million from Amcor, the plastic packaging company.
In a September 2023 memo, NAPCOR says the segment is being made available to more than 175 public television stations. It erroneously refers to the program as “PBS Viewpoint.” The program is not affiliated with the Public Broadcasting Service.
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