Hacker Cinema
The Story of Plastic
2019 · Film · documentary · 95 min
Directed by Deia Schlosberg
The Story of Plastic is a seething expose uncovering the ugly truth behind the current global plastic pollution crisis. Striking footage shot over three continents illustrates the ongoing catastrophe: fields full of garbage, veritable mountains of trash; rivers and seas clogged with waste; and skies choked with the poisonous runoff from plastic production and recycling processes with no end in sight. Original animations, interviews with experts and activists, and never-before-filmed scenes reveal the disastrous consequences of the flood of plastic smothering ecosystems and poisoning communities around the world – and the global movement rising up in response.
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3 comments on Hacker News
Just adding to the conversation: I can strongly recommend the documentary The Story Of Plastic to get an insight on recycling in general.
Reduce, reuse, recycle. I used to be big on trying to reduce my plastic usage, but I gave up on it because the more I got aware of how f*'d up it all is, the more guilty and depressed I started to feel. It felt like fighting a hydra.
I've witnessed it myself: a lot of the waste that gets recycled by the consumer gets thrown on the same pile and goes in the same incinerator. It's not economically feasable to properly recycle plastics. It's all bs greenwashing.
I just stopped caring at some point and became a little more pessimistic about humanity. Sad really.
Why are you so worried about cryptocurrencies, and seemingly not worried about energy companies who actually are the ones who are creating the carbon emissions?
Using electricity and emitting CO2 are only loosely correlated, and in the case of cryptocurrencies are even less correlated because cryptocurrencies are dis-proportionally mined with energy from hydroelectric dams.
All of these articles about the ecological impact of cryptocurrencies only exist to divert public and regulatory attention away from the energy companies that are actually doing all the damage.
Oil companies did the same thing in the 70s when there was public outcry about plastic pollution, so they funded the "reduce reuse recycle" campaigns, and the crying Indian commercial etc, all to divert responsibility from the companies manufacturing the plastics to the consumers who use them.
There is a documentary called "The Story of Plastic" which covers this strategy, and how successful it has been for them in the past.
I've only seen it increase. If you haven't seen the movie The Story of Plastic, I recommend it. Eventbrite lists free screenings all the time, which is how I saw it: https://www.eventbrite.com/d/online/story-of-plastic and eventually hosted my own screening. Here's the video of the panel discussion following the screening, featuring some important panelists: https://joshuaspodek.com/the-story-of-plastic-panel-video, all surprised by how much more plastic we create than they expect.
To your point, it also documents that we're increasing virgin plastic production, to say nothing of all other sorts of litter and waste.