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The document compiles historical evidence from the plastics industry showing a disconnect between public claims about recycling and internal assessments. Industry documents from the 1970s through the 1990s reveal that the industry viewed material recycling as economically marginal or impractical, often preferring waste-to-energy incineration. Despite this, the industry funded public relations campaigns and supported coding systems (like the SPI resin identification codes) that suggested recyclability to consumers, even when the industry knew that markets for recycled plastics were unstable or non-existent for most resin types.

The document presents a collection of 36 internal and public documents from 1963 to 2017, detailing how the oil industry—specifically Exxon, Shell, Mobil, and the American Petroleum Institute (API)—understood the link between fossil fuels and global warming decades ago. It argues that despite internal consensus on the potential for 'catastrophic' impacts, these companies pivoted in the late 1980s to a strategy of manufacturing doubt, funding denier groups, and misleading the public and policymakers to protect their business models.