It was once considered indestructible. Now, it’s destroying the planet. This is the story of plastic.
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00:00Nowadays, everything can be made in plastic.
00:02People know plastic is bad for them and bad for the planet, but it's so convenient.
00:30It was flexible, it was moldable, it was really strong, it lasts forever, it was just like
00:38what are we messing around with wood and metal for?
01:01Plastic was this lightweight super material and they didn't know what it was going to
01:36People were buying plastic all over the place, but they were keeping the plastic and washing
01:57it and reusing it, and the plastics industry was like, no, we can make this for so cheap,
02:02no one has to wash anything, just throw it away, single-use plastic is the future.
02:07Band-aid plastic strips with new super sticks.
02:09It's the crystal clear plastic that lets you see everything you wrap.
02:13After lots of great shaves, you just throw the whole razor away.
02:16Pepsi-Cola's new 2-liter plastic bottle.
02:19It's tough.
02:32We have Earth Day happen, there are cries for legislative change.
02:43These plastic companies felt like legislation was maybe coming down the pipe and they got
02:47a little nervous and so they generated this greenwashy campaign called Keep America Beautiful.
02:52It's all polluters' fault.
02:55It's all people's fault.
02:57People are throwing their trash on the ground and that's why there's trash there, so that
03:00people would think it's sort of their fault and it's on the individual.
03:21They went to the lab and they were trying to make plastic recycling economically viable
03:26and they found out that it's just not really possible.
03:30Then they realized, well, it doesn't have to really work, we just have to make it seem
03:34like it's working or make it seem like we're making the effort and it's really on the consumers
03:39for not recycling enough.
03:51Environmentalists and consumer groups have kind of gotten savvy to how legislative bans
03:57and so they're trying to get single-use plastic bans established in cities, but the plastics
04:02industry has amazing lawyers and so they're having these lawyers and lobby groups go around
04:08to other state legislatures and sort of preemptively ban plastic bans.
04:13And surprise, they're super good at it.
04:43The problem is these like trash plastics that are just intentionally created to become trash
04:58after one use.
04:59Plastic companies make a ton of money off of those things.
05:02If we really want a chance at not succumbing to climate change and maintaining a pretty
05:08safe environment for wildlife and animals in the water, we need to really curtail our
05:13use of single-use plastics.