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, simply because of a material we call plastic.
00:05Plastics make it possible.
00:18People 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.
00:42It was just like, what are we messing around with wood and metal for?
01:01There goes another record.
01:03Not this time, this is a Victor non-breakable record.
01:06Plastic was this lightweight, super material, and they didn't know what it was going to become.
01:12Here, plastic linings for the soldier's steel helmet.
01:31The plastic liners withstand an impact force of 45 pounds.
01:35The Mosquito Bomber.
01:37Built almost entirely of plastic and plywood, the Mosquito's great speed provides for successful hit-and-run bombing.
01:58People were buying plastic all over the place, but they were keeping the plastic and washing it and reusing it.
02:04The plastics industry was like, no, we can make this for so cheap, no one has to wash anything, just throw it away.
02:10Single-use plastic is the future.
02:12Band-aid plastic strips with new super sticks.
02:14It's the crystal clear plastic that lets you say everything you wrap.
02:18After lots of great shaves, you just throw the whole razor away.
02:21Pepsi-Cola's new 2-liter plastic bottle.
02:25It's tough.
02:34We have Earth Day happen.
02:45There are cries for legislative change.
02:48These plastic companies felt like legislation was maybe coming down the pipe, and they got a little nervous, and so they generated this greenwashy campaign called Keep America Beautiful.
02:57Oh, it's all polluters' fault.
03:00It's all, like, people's fault.
03:02People are throwing their trash on the ground, and that's why there's trash there, so that people would think it's sort of their fault and it's on the individual.
03:11People start pollution.
03:13People can stop it.
03:15They went to the lab, and they were trying to make plastic recycling economically viable, and they found out that it's just not really possible, but then they realized, well, it doesn't have to really work.
03:37We just have to make it seem like it's working or make it seem like we're making the effort, and it's really on the consumers for not recycling enough.
03:50If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they're not going to be as concerned about the environment.
04:07Environmentalists and consumer groups have kind of gotten savvy to how legislative bans work, and so they're trying to get single-use plastic bans established in cities, but the plastics industry has amazing lawyers, and so they're having these lawyers and lobby groups go around to other state legislatures and sort of preemptively ban plastic bans, and surprise, they're super good at it.
05:08The problem is these trash plastics that are just intentionally created to become trash after one use.
05:15Plastic companies make a ton of money off of those things.
05:18If we really want a chance at not succumbing to climate change and maintaining a pretty safe environment for wildlife and animals in the water, we need to really curtail our use of single-use plastics.