Plastics Companies Are Writing Lesson Plans. What Could Go Wrong?
A new report from the Plastic Pollution Coalition alleges that the plastics industry is infiltrating K-12 classrooms with biased educational materials. These resources often promote the benefits of plastic while omitting information about environmental and health risks.
Why it matters
The influence of corporate-sponsored materials in schools raises ethical questions about the neutrality of public education and the shaping of future environmental policy.
This fall, 54 million K-12 students are headed back to the classroom for another year of lessons in all the classic subjects: math, English, history, biology. But there’s another subject that’s been sneaking into school curricula: plastics.
A new report from the nonprofit Plastic Pollution Coalition documents the many ways the plastics industry has been inserting its agenda into classrooms across the US—including through lesson plans and worksheets, hands-on science experiments, and a program called “PlastiVan” that travels from city to city teaching students about “the contribution plastics make to modern life.”
Industry interests offer these resources to teachers for free or for cheap, according to the report. The materials tend to highlight the necessity of plastics while downplaying their significant downsides to human health and the environment.
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