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.