For those of you in the U.S. who grew up learning about science from Bill Nye, I have a couple of videos for you that reflect his (public) position on climate change. There is the optimistic Bill Nye, who has been contracted by Coca-Cola to sell the idea that we are just around the corner from a perfect solution to the problem of waste:
This video/ad was reviewed in the article in the url below, with the author denouncing the relationship as a pretty straightforward incidence of greenwashing:
"Bad news for everyone who loved watching Bill Nye the Science Guy during middle school science class: your fave is problematic. This week, Coca-Cola, one of the world's biggest plastic polluters, teamed up with TV's favorite scientist for a campaign to create a 'world without waste,' a joke of a corporate greenwashing campaign."
Needless to say, the assessment of the author is that Bill is, at best, presenting a highly selective element of a much more complicated issue:
"The video is, on the surface, an accurate depiction of the process of recycling a beverage bottle. The problem lies in what recycling can actually do. … Most of those plastics can only be reused once or twice before ending up in a landfill. Nye, for all his talk of science on TV, should know this. Over recycling's 60-year history, less than 10% of plastic that has been produced has ever been recycled. And while in theory, PET—the type of plastic that makes bottles—can be recycled more times than other types of plastic, that's not usually what happens. Virgin plastic is, simply put, cheaper to make into things like bottles than recycled plastic. Less than 30% of plastic bottles are recycled in the U.S., and a lot of that stock is turned not into other bottles, but 'downcycled' into other things, like filler and fabric. These products, in turn, can't be recycled again. The plastic ends up in landfills."
Then, there is the more attention-grabbing (and realistic) assessment of the situation in a short video Bill recorded as part of a John Oliver segment on climate change:
I am guessing that the John Oliver video did not pay nearly as well as the Coca-Cola video, and I'll leave you to determine which one you think is the message we need to be sending from one of the most respected public voices on science.
Take care
David
David Chandler
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Bill Nye, the Sellout Guy
By Molly Taft
April 7, 2022
Gizmodo
