Directed by Ian Connacher.
As someone who has recently purchased a reusable plastic-wrap substitute made of cloth and bee’s wax, this documentary seemed like a must-see. Plastics both make our current lives possible and are inescapable. They are often used to make things tidy and manageable, but the consequences of our plastic habit are anything but. I was surprised to hear that they have been around for about 100 years. And they stay around: plastics, with a few exceptions, do not biodegrade and only break into smaller physical pieces.
The film starts with a look at a section of ocean near a great gyre (a water current that swirls downward like a drain, pulling things in with it). It was amazing to see the pristine longshots of the water compared with the endless amount of plastic waste the researchers pulled out of the water, and this was only representative of the surface. High plastics levels in the ocean are poisoning sea creatures as they ingest them either directly or through the prey they eat.
The film continues its exploration of how we have doomed ourselves on land as well, but, surprisingly, not in a way that is overly preachy or dark. We are shown people dedicated to cleaning this mess up, my favourite being those who talk about the potential to use the energy buried in landfills as we do with oil.
In a time when the zeitgeist is “green” and too often “being green” means putting your bottles in the right bin, this film does an effective job of giving us a big-picture view of plastics and their place in our lives that is realistic without being paralyzingly depressing.
