Companies today claim they are “designing for the environment.” What they often mean is: they’re doing what the Association of Plastics Recyclers (APR) tells them to do.

APR is not an environmental nonprofit, nor is it a scientific body. It is a trade association. Its purpose isn’t planetary stewardship or public benefit—it’s to protect the business model of mechanical recyclers. Across the country, retailers and consumer brands have allowed APR to shape packaging policy, effectively outsourcing key sustainability decisions to an organization with no accountability to the public.

This didn’t happen by accident. It was a calculated public affairs coup.

By presenting itself as a neutral authority on recycling, APR has become the de facto gatekeeper of “recyclable” packaging. Its “Design Guide for Plastics Recyclability” guidelines are treated by many brands as gospel. The result is a system in which APR’s preferences—many of which conveniently raise costs, entrench incumbents, and discourage alternatives—are adopted as moral imperatives rather than contested ideas. //

APR has pulled off something remarkable but all too common in today’s age. It has cloaked its trade priorities in the language of sustainability, allowing its design standards to spread across entire industries without serious scrutiny.

Brands that comply get to call their packaging “recyclable.” Lawmakers and regulators often codify APR’s framework into official policy. Environmental groups, eager to support anything labeled circular or zero-waste, rarely question the mechanics. But this is where the problem begins. //

A 2022 Greenpeace USA report found that less than six percent of plastic waste in the United States is recycled. That means more than 94 percent of plastic—much of it labeled recyclable—never completes the circular loop consumers are led to believe exists.

Meanwhile, the cost of playing by APR’s rules isn’t theoretical. Brands often must reengineer their packaging to meet APR’s specifications, which can involve switching to more expensive materials, altering shapes or adhesives, or redesigning entire product lines. These costs are passed directly to consumers—and they rarely result in actual environmental gains.

In fact, many APR-approved packages use more resources and energy to produce than their conventional counterparts. When those packages aren’t recycled, the net environmental impact is worse than if brands had used simpler, more efficient designs. Compliance becomes performance. And performance becomes policy. //

One of the clearest indicators of APR’s self-interest is its stance on chemical recycling. Unlike mechanical recycling, which is limited to certain polymers and degrades material quality, chemical recycling can break down a broader range of plastics into base feedstocks. It has real potential to scale down plastic recovery and reduce landfill dependency. For APR, chemical recycling threatens its existing model. The association has repeatedly warned that advanced recycling isn’t a “silver bullet,” advocating for limited definitions of the practice and cautioning against falling for marketing claims. //

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Corruption can and nearly inevitably will evolve in what amounts to a natural fashion, whenever any organized group finds its goal or raison d'être has been met, but said group does not then immediately refocus its aim at another problem. Many Unions are the embodiment of this, as are countless Leftist social causes.

But then there is Corruption that was never anything but from the jump, examples we can always trace to the Left. Any solution to an imaginary problem falls under this inevitably taxpayer-funded umbrella.