When listening to the podcast “Planet Money: Waste Land” I was very surprised to hear back
in the 1980s that it was not normal to recycle plastic. The only items that were recycled then
were glass, paper and metal. Coy Smith who had a recycling company thought maybe it is time
to allow my consumers to be able to recycle plastic but back then the reason why no one would
recycle it is because the expense. Smith decided he would allow milk cartoon jugs and soda
bottles but it did not work out the way he wanted it to. Another surprise to me was hearing a
report that was sent to the top oil executives that “Recycling plastic is impossible. There is no
recovery from obsolete products”. It also mentioned that plastic degrades every time it tries to
get used over and over again.
The stakeholders described in the podcast would be all the people who were invested or
interested in the recycling companies. The customers that are contributing to the companies
which if the company fails then affects them by not being able to recycle at a particular place.
Since smith mentioned that plastic would now be accepted at his company but milk cartoon jugs
and soda bottles only the customers did not listen. The customers brought more than that they
brought peanut butter containers or jam containers and Smith had to sort through all of that.
Looking at back then and now most definitely the recycling business has changed. Now there are
a lot of recycling bins at stores, restaurants, theme parks, malls and etc. It is very accessible now
to recycle and most of the time with no cost. People use recycling as another outlet to earn some
cash whether it is going to an actual recycling company and a self-recycle which is near a
grocery store where you put in your own recyclables and get the cash. I will say now it is not as
big of an issue to have to recycle plastic because at least some people do recycle and take care of
the planet actually dumping what could be recycled into the correct bin. Referring back to the
podcast, I do agree that some products probably get thrown away and do not even have the
