The Story of Plastic (Animated Short)

- [Instructor] You've probably heard about a giant trash island in the ocean or that poor sea turtle and the straw. Maybe you've even heard how plastic is being found inside the fish we eat. The plastic crisis gets a lot of attention but the headlines usually focus on the plastic that ends up in the environment, and that's just part of the story.

The truth is plastic has a whole lifecycle that's hidden from view, one that harms people and the planet from start to finish. Let's start at the beginning. Plastic is made from fossil fuels, like oil or fracked natural gas.

Extracting those fossil fuels and turning them into plastics creates a lot of pollution, pollution that most often affects marginalized communities nearby. As we've gotten better about using less oil and gas to power our lives, the fossil fuel industry found a lifeline in plastics. In fact, oil and gas companies are doubling down on plastic production with plans to build or expand over 300 petrochemical plants in the US alone by 2025.

But these companies already produce more plastic than we can use. So where's all that plastic going? A lot of it's flowing into new markets in places like Asia, Africa, and Latin America because more than any other product category, plastic isn't driven by the demand for it but by the supply.

Corporations like Unilever, Nestle, and Procter & Gamble are aggressively marketing single-use plastic products around the world. These companies go to places like Indonesia, where I live, and push their products onto communities that just aren't prepared to deal with all that plastic. Maybe they're used to using natural packaging.

Maybe they live on a tiny island without a system of waste collection. And on top of that, countries in the Global North are shipping their own plastic waste into these countries too. When you add that all up, it's no wonder so much of this plastic ends up in the environment and globally, that's where a whopping 32% of plastic packaging ends up.

40% goes to a landfill where plastic just piles up for future generations to deal with, and 14% incinerated. Incineration is a nasty business producing toxic smoke and fly ash. These super expensive facilities depend on plastic to burn everything else.

It is oil and gas after all. So they want to see more plastics, not less. Then there's recycling.

Unfortunately, it's not the solution that many people think it is. Just 14% of plastic packaging gets recycled and only 2% is effectively recycled, meaning it becomes something as useful as before. The rest is downcycled into something worse.

And most recycled plastic is only recycled once before ending up in landfills, incinerators, or the environment anyway. So it turns out that we can't burn, bury, or recycle our way out of this problem and we can't just scoop all that plastic out of the environment either. That's like trying to bail out a bathtub with a teaspoon while the tap is on full blast.

So how about we turn off the tap by shutting down the plastic machine? That means passing policies that create systemic change like phasing out the single-use plastics that pollute the most, ending the fossil fuel subsidies that are fueling Big Plastic, and holding companies responsible for the plastic waste they create. That's how we can achieve our vision of a zero waste future where all of our products and packaging can be used or repaired, effectively recycled or composted, and ultimately how we create a sustainable, circular economy that works for both people and the planet.

Visit storyofplastic. org to learn more and take action.