On Nov. 14, Eugene Weekly published a letter praising Styrofoam from Tim Shestek, a lobbyist for American Chemistry Council in Sacramento. I hope Eugene finally bans this useless, toxic crap, but it is worth remembering there were efforts to ban plastics three decades ago. Some campaigns elsewhere resulted in bans, but few were enforced and are now forgotten.

In response, the plastics industry rebranded their products as allegedly recyclable. Now that the illusion of plastic recycling has gone up in toxic smoke, the industry is promoting burning this waste to “recycle” its heat value. This is the meaning of “innovative plastics recovery technologies” in Shestek’s letter.

Eugene-based consultant Good Company says at GoodCompany.com that it is working with the American Chemistry Council on “Plastics to Fuel Technologies” — a euphemism for burning plastic garbage. CO2 is the least of the problems with incinerating toxic waste: Incinerators create countless new cancer-causing compounds that bio-accumulate up the food chain.

Good Company is also a consultant to the city of Eugene’s Climate Inaction Plan 2.0. This plan claims buying carbon credits (promoted by Good Company) will help make city operations carbon-neutral.

The plan ignores the proposed 12 to 14 lane widening of Beltline Highway across the Willamette River for about a third of a billion dollars.

The plan ignores physical limits to growth: Conventional oil and gas are in sharp decline. Fracked oil and gas fuel the illusion of continued growth, for now.

Mark Robinowitz

Eugene

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