Internal industry documents from the 1970s show that plastic producers knew recycling was not viable at scale. Despite this knowledge, Big Oil and the plastics industry promoted recycling as a solution for nearly four decades to prevent production bans. A 2025 document discovery showed industry awareness in 1974 that recycling was a false solution. Meanwhile, microplastics have been detected throughout the human body — in blood, lungs, liver, and joints — with people consuming up to 193,200 microplastic particles per year.