The plastics industry hijacked the chasing arrows symbol — Congress can fix this

If you spot the classic “chasing arrows” symbol on your next takeout container, you’ll probably assume that — so long as you toss the container in the right bin after lunch — it will end up being recycled.

The symbol — which was created by a California college student for the inaugural Earth Day in 1970 — was originally designed as a universal symbol to indicate that a product can be recycled. But in the late 1980s, the Society of the Plastics Industry (today’s Plastics Industry Association) hijacked the chasing arrows icon to categorize plastic types, regardless of their recyclability.

In fact, less than 9 percent of plastics in the U.S. are recycled — a stunningly low figure, given that we are the No. 1 generator of plastic waste worldwide. Instead, most of the plastics we use are landfilled, exported, or mismanaged, with devastating consequences for our ocean. Scientists estimate that more than a garbage truck’s worth of plastics enters the ocean every minute globally.

The vast majority of plastics found on beaches are unrecyclable. And even small amounts of plastic pollution can be deadly to marine life: if ingested, less than a sugar cube’s worth of plastic is enough to kill one in two Atlantic puffins.

The gap between a typical consumer’s understanding of the chasing arrows symbol and the........

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