Paid influencers on TikTok. An infomercial hosted by Dennis Quaid. Pushback against the Olympics’ single-use plastic ban.

A trove of documents leaked from an influential industry group shows how some of the world’s largest petrochemical and plastics companies have been waging a campaign to push back against a “tide of anti-plastic sentiment” — especially among young people concerned about the environment.

The industry group, the National Association for PET Container Resources, or NAPCOR, worked to deliberately obscure its connection to the campaign and make its content “authentic and from the creators’ viewpoints,” the documents show.

PET stands for polyethylene terephthalate, the plastic used to make single-use soda bottles and clamshell containers.

The corporate strategizing laid out in the documents provides a behind-the-scenes look at a battle being waged over the future of plastic. Nations are gathering in Busan, South Korea this week to hammer out details of a global plastic treaty that might tackle pollution at its source, by limiting its production — an approach that the plastic industry has vehemently opposed.

ImageIn a paid partnership video on TikTok, an influencer misleadingly claimed that “PET bottles are a closed-loop, zero-waste system.”

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