Total Exaggeration: The Guardian's Questionable Anti-plastic Narrative

Every day, millions worldwide rely on bottled water for safe, convenient hydration, reaping benefits like reduced calorie intake. Better still, the positive health effects are enabled by a product that research has shown has the smallest environmental footprint of all packaged beverages. It’s a major public health and sustainability success story; one the media should tell to reassure the public that by drinking bottled water they’re making a smart choice for themselves and the planet. Unfortunately, instead of science-based analysis, reporters much prefer to speculate about the supposed risks of plastic exposure.

Case in point: in a July 2025 piece titled “‘Total infiltration’: How plastics industry swamped vital global treaty talks,” The Guardian painted a misleading picture, announcing that “Plastic and the toxic chemicals it contains … damage soils, ecosystems and human health, having pervaded the entire world.” The problem with this portrayal is it deliberately intends to scare people from consuming essential products like bottled water.

While this tale undoubtedly helps The Guardian attract readers and raise money, it suffers from a critical deficit: it’s highly misleading. Plastics are vital to modern society because of their lightweight, durable, and versatile nature, enabling advancements in transportation, healthcare, and food preservation. Plastics make vehicles more fuel-efficient, provide sterile packaging for essential medical devices, extend food shelf life to reduce waste, and improve energy efficiency in buildings. As we’ll see below with bottled water, The Guardian’s claims are alarmist and overstated, relying on incomplete evidence to stoke fear rather than inform balanced discourse.

Environmental impact: just the facts

Reporter Damien Carrington apparently didn’t fact-check France’s environment minister who described the alleged effects of plastic as “suffocating our ecosystem, poisoning food chains and threatening our children’s future,” because those claims don’t stand up to even mild scrutiny. Far from “suffocating” ecosystems, the widespread use of highly recyclable plastic water bottles, made from polyethylene terephthalate (PET), means less impact on the environment compared to other packaging materials. PET water bottles use almost 1/3 the amount of plastic as soda bottles (which are thicker due to carbonation). PET plastic is the most widely recognized and recycled plastic globally—nearly two billion pounds of PET are collected for reuse each year in the United States. In fact, PET outperforms glass and aluminum beverage packaging in many key environmental categories, including using less energy and producing fewer greenhouse gas emissions.

In other words, The Guardian has completely misdiagnosed the problem. What its examination should have found (and informed its readers about) was that, far from being a wrong solution, plastic is actually an aid to help us reach many environmental goals.

A world without plastics will be much worse for the environment and human health. 

Microplastics

The Guardian’s health claims are no better than its environmental assertions. While Carrington declares that microplastics have infiltrated every organ and inch of our bodies — “from human brains to human breast milk” — nowhere does he explain what this actually means, leaving readers to infer that they’re in harm’s way. But that, too, is misleading because exposure does not equal harm.

For instance, people routinely consume bottled water to stay hydrated, which is essential to good health. They are exposed to plastic, of course, but the hypothetical risk is dwarfed by the benefit of protecting themselves from dehydration. While bottled water is just one of thousands of food and beverage products (including soft drinks and juices) packaged in plastic, researchers test water because it is the easiest product to test. Conclusions that drinking water is a major route for oral intake of micro- and nano-plastics are not justified.  

The same message comes through when we examine the research Carrington cited in his article. None of the studies cited by Carrington established causal links between plastic exposure and any harmful health impacts. Correlation does not imply causation, as the old adage goes. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which tightly regulates the production, distribution, and marketing of bottled water, made this abundantly clear in 2024:

"[T]he FDA is not aware of scientific evidence that would support consumers being concerned about the potential level of microplastic or nanoplastic contamination in food, including bottled water."

Instead of urging the public to panic about a risk that has yet to (and may never) materialize, The Guardian should provide balanced reporting based on input from experts. “Living a healthy lifestyle, including adequate sleep, a balanced diet and reducing stress, may also help,” Stanford University pediatrician Kara Meister explained in January. "Just because you have a little plastic in you doesn't necessarily mean doomsday.”

Pay-for-play journalism

While The Guardian spent most of its article objecting to the plastic industry’s influence on the public discourse about plastic, it failed to disclose a critical fact: the paper itself is heavily financed by wealthy foundations that are working to eliminate single-use plastic.

The Guardian's series Seascape: the state of our oceans, which aims to draw "attention to the dramatic changes taking place in our oceans," is funded by The McPike-Zima Foundation and the Fund for Environmental Journalism. This support has generated stories such as this Sept. 24 piece claiming “microplastics – tiny particles from broken-down plastic – pose a long-term threat to wildlife and human health.”

The Fund for Environmental Journalism is a grant-making program of the Society of Environmental Journalists, which credits multiple wealthy legacy foundations and NGOs as supporters of the initiative, including: the Energy Foundation, Environmental Defense Fund, Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, Nature Conservancy, Pew Charitable Trusts, and the Walton Family Foundation — all of which are heavily involved in anti-industry environmental activism.

The public has a right to know who is involved in the debate over the risks and benefits of plastic. However, that transparency standard doesn’t apply only to industry. Consistency demands that The Guardian and its reporters acknowledge that they have a large financial stake in this issue, yet Carrington’s article disclosed none of these conflicts of interest.

Conclusion: balanced reporting, not activism

The Guardian advertises its commitment to “Independent Journalism,” claiming that reporters “must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information.” The paper has fallen far short of those laudable editorial standards in this case, promoting speculation about microplastics that misleads and alarms rather than informs. In the future, Carrington and his colleagues should strive to do better by their readers.