How Big Oil misled the public into believing plastic would be recycled

The plastics industry spent decades promoting recycling while privately doubting it would ever work

This FRONTLINE investigation reveals that plastic makers publicly championed recycling for years despite internal doubts about its viability, and that no more than 10% of the plastic ever produced has been recycled.

Large oil companies knew about the impact of carbon emissions since the ’70s

PBS Frontline’s The Power of Big Oil reveals how industry giants like Exxon and Shell were researching climate change in the 1970s but then funded denial campaigns—using internal science to sow public doubt for decades.

How chemical recycling could create 'infinite' plastic

The way we normally recycle plastics is a downward spiral of waste and degraded materials, but there is another option—turning plastic back into the oil it was made from.

The Keep America Beautiful campaign shifted the blame for litter from manufacturers to individuals

This podcast examines how one organization reshaped the American public's relationship with recycling, asking why responsibility for a cleaner environment falls to individuals rather than to the companies that produce waste.

Visualizing the enormity of plastic waste compared to global landmarks

The team at Reuters Graphics visualizes the world’s addiction to plastic bottles. Around the world, almost 1 million plastic bottles are purchased every minute. The illustrations included in this visual explainer show what that pile of plastic would look like if it was collected over longer periods of time and how large the piles would be compared to famous landmarks.

A step-by-step guide to the plastic recycling process

Everything you wanted to know about how plastic is recycled, the companies that collect and recycle plastic, where you can recycle, and much more.

Founder of The Ocean Cleanup explains the case for cleaning oceans

Removing trash from the oceans not only saves wildlife, it may save human lives, too. The CEO and founder of The Ocean Cleanup explains how existing plastic pollution harms us and get harder to clean up over time.

Countries tried to curb plastic waste, but the US keeps shipping more

Data show that American exporters continue to ship plastic waste overseas, often to poorer countries, even though most of the world has agreed to not accept it.

How disruptions in oil markets can drive up the price of everyday goods

Most types of plastic are made from polymers derived from chemicals produced by the processing and refining of crude oil and natural gas. Spikes in the cost of either fossil fuel raise the cost of wrappings, tubs, and other plastic containers for products.

Plastics don’t biodegrade because their chemical bonds are unnatural to microbes

Despite coming from petroleum, which itself comes from organic material, synthetic plastic was not mass-produced until the mid-20th century. Insufficient time has passed for microbes to develop the necessary enzymes to break it down naturally.

The prevalence of microplastics came from plastic’s affordability and versatility

Microplastics' durability and overuse have led to massive pollution that overwhelms the planet's ecosystems. Avian, terrestrial, and marine life have been observed to contain microplastics in their bodies, but reverting to paper, cotton, and other materials in manufacturing also brings environmental challenges.

The harsh realities of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch

Misleading images and narratives have caused the public to believe that the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is simply a large clump of floating trash in the ocean. Instead, a more apt description would paint it as a dispersed "soup of microplastics" that severely impacts marine life and the fishing industry. Read for a greater understanding of how the GPGP came to be, and the measures that need to be taken for a cleanup.

How billiard balls catalyzed the 'Plastics Century'

For centuries, billiard balls were made of ivory from elephant tusks. But when excessive hunting caused elephant populations to decline, they began to look for alternatives: celluloid, which would become known as the first plastic.

'Last Week Tonight' explores the risks of forever chemicals (warning: language)

Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are a group of man-made chemicals used in a wide range of products due to their unique properties. However, because they can persist in the body and environment for thousands of years, they’ve earned the moniker “forever chemicals”—and have been linked with numerous health risks.

Most expiration dates are completely made up

Producers, sellers, and consumers waste tons of food. In this 20-minute episode, John Oliver discusses the shocking amount of food we don’t eat.

How microbes limited the damage and helped clean up the Deepwater Horizon oil spill

A bloom estimated to contain about 100 sextillion microbial cells broke down much of the 4.1 million barrels of spilled crude oil into nontoxic compounds in what was one of the most significant bioremediations of a human-made disaster. The microbes involved acted similarly to the first patented genetically modified organism in US history: an oil-eating bacterium engineered in 1971.

See how DOJ prosecutors took down a pharmaceutical company's executives over the opioid crisis

This FRONTLINE documentary follows federal prosecutors as they used anti-racketeering laws to convict executives at Insys Therapeutics, a pharmaceutical company that bribed doctors to overprescribe a fentanyl painkiller.

Go inside the global effort that led to the Montreal Protocol in this narrative podcast

Nobel laureate Mario Molina and other key voices recount how science and diplomacy converged to develop a plan to close the ozone hole, offering insight into history's most successful environmental treaty.

BP only makes up about 1% of global oil production after many missteps

BP’s market cap has never recovered from the dive it took following the 2010 Deep Water Horizon oil spill. This video details some of BP’s corporate missteps along the way.

Dietary supplements are regulated like foods

This hour-long 2016 documentary from Frontline, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and The New York Times examined the safety of dietary supplements. It noted that this then-$30B industry (it's at least doubled since then) suffers from irregularities and impurities. It warned that many Americans are unaware of the lack of regulatory oversight over these products.

A top Alzheimer's researcher was accused of faking results

In 2021, an investigation revealed photo manipulation in images from a seminal 2006 paper by researcher Sylvain Lesné on the role of amyloid plaques in progressive Alzheimer's disease. The revelation rocked the field, leaving many wondering whether they had tried to build on fabricated results. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

‘The Giant Pool of Money’ remains one of the most acclaimed accounts of the 2008 housing bubble

This Peabody Award–winning "This American Life" episode traces how cheap global money, subprime lending, and Wall Street engineering inflated the housing bubble. Through vivid reporting and real voices, it became one of the defining works of 2000s financial journalism.

An investigation suggests a Scottish island became awash in forever chemicals via seafoam and seaspray—raising questions about what that means for the safety of other coastal areas.

Listen to the five-part podcast series that reconstructs how Challenger failed

The "American Scandal" podcast devotes a five-part series to Challenger, tracing the engineering warnings, internal pressure to launch, the moment of the explosion, and the long aftermath that reshaped NASA's safety culture.

Paperwork errors cost families millions in life-insurance payouts

This podcast episode reveals how human missteps by employers and insurance providers caused hundreds of families who paid life-insurance premiums to be denied millions of dollars in death benefits. A Wall Street Journal reporter breaks down how flaws in the system made this happen.

Soybean oil fraud almost decimated American Express in 1963

A New York commodities trader who had defrauded the American government over uninspected meat for school lunches, Anthony "Tino" De Angelis, used American Express warehouses to sell soybean oil. However, Angelis had actually filled the tanks with water and placed just enough soybean oil on top of the tanks to pass inspection. American Express was liable for many of the tanks and its stock faced a huge downturn, opening the door for a then 33-year-old Warren Buffett to make his first purchase in the company.

Listen to an in-depth conversation on the links between Parkinson's disease and herbicide exposure and the challenging pace of scientific investigation.

Netflix profits when you're not watching, and its movies are designed that way—read a detail-rich critical essay exposing lesser-known Netflix takes

Louisiana's 'Cancer Alley' is infamous for having some of the highest industrial pollution, toxic air emissions, and cancer risks in the US.

The price of gas is a composite made up of several different factors, with the federal gas tax making up less than 20% of what drivers pay at the pump.

In 2009, the nation was gripped by the story of a missing young boy who was believed to be floating over Colorado in a homemade balloon, until it was revealed that he was at home the whole time.

Discover the catastrophic consequences of a failure of the US electrical grid—something that is more likely than many Americans think.

How the most famous Ebola book, The Hot Zone, which sold 3.5 million copies and was translated into 30 languages, got aspects of the disease so wrong.

US consumers collectively owe more than $1T to credit card companies—almost as much as they owe in auto loans.

Hear about the 250-year history of the United States Postal Service, complete with some of its strangest deliveries, important innovations, and the figures that made it an American institution.

Explore the history, structure, and species of Australia's Great Barrier Reef with this interactive journey narrated by Sir David Attenborough.

Massive 3D printers have been used to build homes by stacking layers of 'concrete toothpaste,' a fire-resistant material that effectively insulates against outside noise.

When a Paris department store hesitated to sell Estée Lauder's perfume, she 'accidentally' broke a bottle, causing the smell to spread throughout the store and shoppers to start asking to buy the scent.

'Saturday Night Fever,' the 1977 film that introduced disco to the mainstream, was based on a fabricated magazine story.

Sony set the standard for cylinder-shaped batteries when it repurposed manufacturing equipment used to make rolls of magnetic recording tape.

Indefinite cloning of some endangered species may not sustain their longevity because cloning success rates decrease as genetic mutations accumulate.

Jimmy Carter signed a 1978 bill that legalized home brewing, a move credited with kick-starting the craft beer industry.

Gerrymandering works through two techniques: cracking opposing voters across districts to dilute their power, and packing them into a few to waste their votes in lopsided majorities.

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

In 1984, Operation Smash Hit intentionally crashed a 239-ton train into a nuclear waste canister at 100 miles per hour to prove the canister's safety, which remained completely intact and lost just 0.29 of its 100 pounds of pressure.

See how fireworks are made and learn how metals like magnesium and copper are responsible for different colors.

After NASA's Voyager 1 captured Earth as a single pixel as it left the solar system in 1990, astronomer Carl Sagan used the image to reflect on humanity's fragility and the responsibility to protect 'the only world we've ever known.'

An initial public offering or 'IPO' is the process of a private company becoming public by putting shares of the company on the stock market for purchase.

In 2025, four executives from large tech companies were given positions in the US Army Reserves—including Palantir Chief Technology Officer Shyam Sankar, which reinforced Palantir's ties with the US military and its role as a leading defense partner.

The Beatles' US label rejected the band's first two singles, 'Please Please Me' and 'From Me to You,' with one executive calling the band 'dead in the water.'