Giving Compass' Take:

• In this story from Fast Company, author Adele Peters looks at how leading petroleum corporations are simultaneously funding a multibillion-dollar effort to end plastic waste and a $200 billion dollar increase in global plastic production.

• For environmental advocates looking for lasting, long-term solutions, how can this story inform their strategy? How can philanthropists affect the production of plastic, rather than or in addition to promoting recycling and clean up efforts?

• To learn about ten simple ways you can reduce single-use plastic in your own life, click here.

A new nonprofit plans to spend at least $1 billion to help keep plastic waste out of the environment; in Southeast Asia, as one part of the plan, it will help cities build badly-needed new recycling infrastructure. But most of the companies that are funding the new effort, the Alliance to End Plastic Waste–a group of 30 corporations that includes ExxonMobil, Shell, Dow, and others in the oil and gas and plastics industries–are simultaneously planning to increase their own plastic production.

“We do need more recycling infrastructure as part of the solution,” says Graham Forbes, the global plastic leader at Greenpeace. “But when you look at the facts, the companies sitting around the table committing $1 billion largely to collect plastic waste are at the same time part of an almost $200 billion investment in increasing petrochemical production. The numbers just don’t match up.”

The new nonprofit plans to support recycling infrastructure in the places where plastic is most likely to “leak” into rivers and the ocean, and will support Renew Oceans, a project that works to capture plastic before it reaches the ocean. It also will help fund the Incubator Network by Circulate Capital, an investment management firm that invests in startups that prevent ocean plastic. All of these are worthwhile pursuits. But the oil and plastic companies behind the project are missing a key part of the bigger problem: If we’re struggling to deal with plastic waste now, how much worse will things become when the amount of new plastic radically grows? How can companies stop making so much plastic in the first place? As recycling increases, how will their business models change?

Read the full article about recycling by Adele Peters at Fast Company