Description
Book SynopsisPlastic is omnipresent in our daily lives. But the companies that make it-petrochemical companies which are often subsidiaries of Big Oil like ExxonMobil and Dow Chemical-seem to be hiding in plain sight. Because for all the vivid coverage of where plastic ends up, there is remarkably little discussion of where it comes from. Through a mix of investigative deep dive and vivid character-driven storytelling, Plastic Inc for the first time tells the story of a vast, rapacious industry that, despite public opinion universally calling for less waste and fossil fuel emissions, is preparing to double and eventually triple plastic production by 2050.
Award-winning journalist Beth Gardiner gives readers an up-close look at the plastic industry's relentless growth, its manipulation of culture and governments, its extraordinary profits, its toxic pollution and its pivotal role in exacerbating climate change. That for decades Big Oil's masterplan has been to grow plastics in the face of diminishing demand for fossil fuels in a post oil and gas world.
Every chapter in Plastic Inc brings new revelations, including:
How Big Oil invented the idea of recycling in order to produce more plastic, aware that recycling at scale would never work.How Big Oil created and funded litter campaigns in the 1970s to push responsibility onto the consumer, and away from the producersHow microplastics are becoming a huge public health crisisHow Big oil colludes with US lobby groups and ploughs huge resource into preventing even the smallest town-wide ban on plastic bags or take away containers.
The stories in Plastic Inc will reframe for readers a problem many of us think we understand, but which has deeper roots and a more complex future than we can have possibly imagined.
