The dirty truth about the iconic recycling label—and how Big Plastic spread the lie for years
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![The dirty truth about the iconic recycling label—and how Big Plastic spread the lie for years](https://images.fastcompany.com/image/upload/w_1280,q_auto,f_auto,fl_lossy/wp-cms-2/2024/06/p-1-91142181-recycling-symbol-lost-all-meaning.jpg)
Corporations sold Americans on the chasing arrows—while stripping the logo of its worth.
It’s Earth Day 1990, and Meryl Streep walks into a bar. She’s distraught about the state of the environment. “It’s crazy what we’re doing. It’s very, very, very bad,” she says in ABC’s prime-time Earth Day special, letting out heavy sighs and listing jumbled statistics about deforestation and the hole in the ozone layer.