Single Use Planet

Plastic is vital in so many ways to our modern way of life and well-being—but not all forms of it. In search of why evermore single-use plastic debris enters the ocean despite all efforts to recycle, we go upstream to where millions of tons of raw plastic are being made amidst the ruins of America’s bygone steel industry in Pennsylvania. Further upstream we see the economic and political realities that have boosted the new industry—realities reaching all the way to rural Louisiana where plans are laid to build the biggest plastic plant in the world. Can the powerful industry be persuaded to temper their production of single-use plastic? Our search leads to Washington D.C. and finally to France.