The Story of Plastic (Animated Short) 

To watch the full documentary and take action for a plastic-free future, visit www.storyofstuff.org/storyofplastic/

the story of stuff changed my life.

RECYCLING, REDUCING, and REUSING are all wonderful environmental actions. However, we so often forget about the most important of the "R-Words." That is to REFUSE! If we all REFUSE to buy items made from plastic, the fossil fuel industry and their buddies at the petrochemical plants, will begin to lose their political and economic power.

I am sickened every time I have to throw away more plastic. It is in everything we buy, even when we try hard to avoid it. The Story of Stuff does a great job of explaining the situation we are in. Thank you for making these documentaries!

I've been railing against plastic for nearly 55 years, since before the first Earth Day, and every year I could see more things being replaced by plastic. When glass mayonnaise jars were changed to plastic, I was outraged. When car parts that used to be steel were replaced by plastic, I was outraged. When I first heard of the great Pacific garbage patch, I was outraged! When I heard about the turtle with the plastic straw stuck in his nose, I was outraged! Now we're finding that plastic micro-particles are everywhere, including the North and South poles, the bellies of fish and birds, and even our own bodies, and I am outraged!! The petro-chemical industries don't care what their toxic substances are doing to us, and it's long past time to stop them! I've signed the petitions, I've written to my representatives. Outrage isn't enough! We have to stop producing plastics, and go back to the ways we made things before this scourge was unleashed on the world!

Very nice ! I've used the bathtub / broken faucet analogy for years to describe this problem (and honestly, 99% of societal problems, you can't end things like climate change, homelessness and hunger until you finally close the open "pipelines" leading to them) and people just don't get it, they will act as if you're just not spooning the water out quick enough.. Hopefully this can help some people to see past false solutions and that systemic problems REQUIRE systemic changes.

Dear Story of Stuff. I am Aussie and live in QLD. In the past 2 years, we have reduced our plastic. We have mandated reductions, such as single use plastic shopping bags, and mandated reductions in single use plastics such as styrofoam, plastic utensils, etc. In 2019, we reintroduced a drink container deposit program, and I am proud to say, with great success. As a child growing up in South Australia during the 1970’s, I earned my pocket money by returning milk and coke bottles back to the shops for the deposits. I applaud the QLD government for reintroducing these schemes because I fondly remember this growing up. Although my daughter didn’t grow up with these schemes, we did collect aluminium cans for recycling. We usually took them for recycling in local recycling facilities. We crushed the cans and earned cash for cans.

What a beautiful presentation. Thank you to everyone who participated in creation of this video.

It's so refreshing to see an argument that is so well-constructed and by the people who need to be heard the most. Kudos, and thank you for being on this planet with me!

Very well done. Thank you. Let's share this great film far and wide and ask everyone to say no to plastic and to support non-plastic packaging and products.

thank you for your on going efforts to spread the message 💚

YES! I will share this widely. Thank you for this Earth Day gift!

These videos are excellent, but please, please consider providing/including your sources for the figures and conclusions presented within. It will not only provide a solid and falsifiable foundation for the videos, but it will also give your audience a route through which to critically analyse your content and learn more around the subject from an academic point of view. Excellent work so far!

Thank you for the short version, this is to the point and very helpful. I really enjoy the cartoon series from before.

Thank you for spreading environment awareness! ❤️😊

Another great job! Keep it up folks.

Peoples are using plastics daily in their life. Carrying stuffs, food packaging systems in all this way plastics are being used. But throwing them is an example of pollution which brings disadvantages to nature as well as human beings. People should pay care of it otherwise, environment is polluted easily.

I will share this video immediately

Thank you for making and sharing this video. Everyone needs to know this information.

Thank you for this informative video. I will share it with other people. We must do this for the Earth to survive for future generations. Everyone must do their part. Each item you touch or buy must be accounted for in how one disposes of the item.

Excellent video.

This is great! Thank you for this! I’ll definitely be sharing!

Stoked we just stumbled upon the short!

Well summarized the problem, congratulations! I hope, it will help to make people aware of this fact.

A very timely and relevant issue to discuss this #EarthDay2021 to help #RestoreOurEarth. Thank you for showing us the whole story of plastic in a concise video. I'm gonna share this with my networks for sure!

This video has had a significant impact on my understanding of caring for the environment. Thank you for sharing the video😀

Great video Story of Stuff Project team!

Um dos melhores, mais antigos e mais importantes vídeos que ja vi no RU-vid, Obrigado pelo grande serviço prestado a humanidade!

Thank you for continuing to make such great videos. This channel is amazing!

What a wonderful vision for a plastic free future! :-)

AWESOME VIDEO! Really helped me understand. Thank you.

Excellent!

Wow! Great video! I hope all people will realize this.

Such a well made video for students to learn from. Thank you.

Nous avons étudié cette vidéo en anglais en 1ère année de master HSQE à Lille !! Elle est excellente ! Merci pour le travail effectué !!!

Great content

This story is very meaningful to me because the process that we did, come to us as bad saturation. If I throw single use plastic not disposed of properly, this plastic will be become to me indirect method or direct method.

0:30 *Loved it!* *That whole lifecycle of a single plastic is often sadly overlooked. =(*

Awesome❤

Are the two documentaries from 1980 and 2020 the same (both called The Story of Plastic)? The one from 2020 is not available to rent from Amazon in the US...

Yeah, we should take action 💯✅

Wonderful video!

Thank you for creating a great video!

Very nicely explained!

This is amazing everyone should send it to the people that they know it’s the best idea ever

This is a great video.

I really love this... I just wanna tell you something All your videos and especially this is like really good..... I love it All the best...

I agree with your idea, but plastics impact the life of every person every day and everywhere. Without plastics, food waste would increase. Without plastics, fuel costs would increase due to the heavier vehicles. Without plastics, medical care would be very difficult if not impossible. We would have to think of another solution to stop pollution and trash being spread everywhere-

Thanks

I love this video it's so useful.thank you for making it!!!

Hi! Can we use this short to show the problematic of plastics in our oceans. We want to reproduce this video in our auditorium.

very good video

I found a document with all the sources frome the story of stuff but I can't find any about this. Does this document exists? I would like sources about Nestle, PandG and Unilever advertising for single use platic. Thanks a lot.

Love this video so much :)

This is really informative and I love the animation you did especially for the gas companies 😹 thanks for sharing!

2:31 that’s true only for old incinerators. New ones in eu must comply with eye regulations which states that plastic could be only burned at certain temperatures (500 Celsius if I remember correctly) so to burn plastic they first need to warm up by smthg else like coal or gas

Which aap do u use

Great solution

Isn't plastic fantastic? that it leaves such a drastic impact on environment that is ignored by the government But why would they address it It's money , they caress it. ☮

Hii mam which editor you use ?

thank you for doing the video it helped me in my pypx

Every Company that makes Plastic Products should be FORCED to deal with their Plastic Waste that they have created and they should spend their money to clean up the Oceans as they have PROFITED from the sales of those products.... One Love, Rajesh Semrete Selassie Aggarwal FRSA

Me too that Is why I am making a project for it

thank you!

o ooh, miss Annie voice has gone 🤷🏼‍♀️ .. mbak Tiza, salam kenal 🙋🏻‍♂️

Super. Toll erklärt.

Hi there team, terrific work with this! I will be hosting a screening event for a short film that I have just finished that raises awareness of Plastic Pollution in the Cayman Islands. I am the operations manager for Plastic Free Cayman, and would like to also play your video during our event, would you mind if we played it in the Cayman Islands for our audience?

Man-made plastic is suffered by poor animals, this isn't fair at all. SINGLE USE ITEMS should be aligel around the world 🌎😢

Hii good story

good stor

Hi, is this possible to share this link on our sustainable brand social media page?

I dream of a French version of this for my classroom.....

I really agree😀

Waste to energy is NOT an Incinerator,. I agree with all the rest though.

Hi, how can I get the short animated film in Spanish? Thanks.

Hello. Can i have permission to use this video for my technical video presentation? Thank you in advance

Believe it or not, I had never heard about the giant trash island in the ocean.

It's cuz, let us be honest, plastic is a ridiculously versatile product's, especially for containing things like liquids. Not to mention plastic includes everything pfrom PVC to styrofoam. Fully replacing plastic will probably nto happen, but the best way to not contribute is to re-use things, like using washable dishes and bottles and all that stuff.Recycling is mostly useless with plastic, I don't know about other countries but in Mexico it all ends up in landfills anyway. Even other more"developed"countries only reclycle a fraction of it due to polymer degradation. This will not stop, may God give mercy to us.

This video is great, as all Story of Stuff videos. I love how your videos are so well-explained and visually organized. The only thing I was expecting to hear when you mention where the plastic problem starts is a brief mention of the destruction oil production causes for people, as well as animals, say in the Amazon rainforest. The fact that there is deforestation, oil spills on rivers and colossal destruction of our beautiful rainforest habitats in order to extract and explore for oil is the beginning of the plastic disaster. How can that huge part be left out of this "oil production" chain. It has killed and sickened thousands of people and animals in the last couple of decades : (

We could all be responsible consumers.

Exactly. We need to outlaw the production of garbage

Even in events where they talk about ecology provide food in plastic containers and plastic cutlery. Its very sick. I'm sick of all this shit.

Cho mình xin nội dung được k ạ

I DID READ THAT JAPAN HAD SO MUCH PLASTIC IN "JAPAN"S OCEAN THAT THEY HAD TO COLLECT ALL THE PLASTIC FROM THERE AND TURN BACK TO OIL ALL THAT SPOT OF PLASTIC IN "JAPAN"S OCEAN WAS MAKING PROBLEMS TO THE JAPANESE SEA TRAVELING !!! AND THEY NOTICE THAT WAS JUST A PROBLEM THAT THEY MIGHT TURN INTO A SOLUTION !!!

Just listened to joe rogan and Dr. Shanna Swan today, it really is a problem.... I wish it was regulated more

i swear everyone in the comments is doing this for school lol

5.15.21

But we are also going to have problems in future please make a video on this

0:52 what makes you state we have?

Oh :( Go away plastic we don't need it!

the obvious question is how does all this plastic get into the oceans in the first place? Not nets - that's obvious - but all the rest. Its said that it washes down from lakes & streams - but I doubt it - the quantities and types of plastic dont add up. There's too much of it for that. Its much more likely that some irresponsible private waste disposal folks are dumping bargefuls of this stuff into the deep oceans rather than paying to bury or recycle it - just think - what would YOU do to make money ? Most likely the Chinese, Indians or both (or any unregulated countries with a coastline) are dumping it at sea - knowing that they will never be caught - and its Free ! Are there any such studies ?

Can you send the speech

I have seen a video where they were making plastic bricks for building, why is that a bad idea. If we recycle plastic effectively we can find a way.

bro i gotta do this shit for school somebody help

Well, in general I might agree but, do you really think that banning ALL the plastic from the planet is the solution we need? I believe that we should differentiate between the kind of plastic in use rather than say "stop plastic". I think I have plastic food-boxes which are ten years old, still working, I am happy of using them. Also, the keyboard I am using right now to type, is made of plastic; I cannot imagine it made of wood or paper (of course, if somebody will invent a new biodegradable keyboard... ). A solution might be something in between, rather than full-ban, like educating people to the right use of products (plastic included), buying only what is really necessary, choosig long-lasting items, not disposable, and be aware of any single action they take, growing a social and environmental responsibility. Of course, governments have a big role in all this. Just blaming on companies, to me, is a big effort with little benefit in return.

hello, when You will do "the story of cruel meat system" ... It is bigger problem than plastic poll.

Ive always wanted to recycle to help the environment but it's just way to much where I live and it would lmt be worth it anyway. So I'ma keep on just burning my garbage 😭

I’d like to translate this in Russian, could you send a transcript?

There is hardly any plastic gets recycled., and human behavior is not reliable enough in any case. Accordingly, it is better to send the plastics to landfills.

unfortunately stopping plastic production is not good business...