David Allaway is a senior policy analyst with the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. Industry would only switch to a triangle, which recyclers said was too similar to the chasing arrows. That was one of the comments early, that it implied that those products were being recycled. Plastic is different than any The recycling system that we have at the moment, its not really recycling because some part of it exportedbeing exported all over the world to be "recycled," but you never know whether its really being recycled overseas or not. All of a sudden, our own customers, they would bring it in and not only say it has the triangle, but it wouldthey would flat-out say, "It says its recyclable right on it." I dont think this kind of advertising is helpful to them at all. To the best of my knowledge there has been no life cycle analysis of plastic. So here weve collected some old newspaper articles from 199425 years ago. Ask students to predict what might happen if turtles or seabirds become less common in a coral reef ecosystem. The big problem is that it is all about money, profits. Smokejumping is the pinnacle of wild land firefighting. So, if somebody throws their Tide bottle into their bin, thats a win, but what youre saying is youre seeing more and more of this stuff. Students will learn the unexpected economic and ecological facets of plastic pollution and ways for each of us to minimize our plastic footprint. Sun, Angela (film director) How much responsibility do you feel like you have over what's happening here? About Press Copyright Contact us Creators Advertise Developers Terms Privacy Policy & Safety How YouTube works Test new features NFL Sunday Ticket Press Copyright . See it and share it with others!' Not a good idea for the Earth. Students will learn the unexpected economic and ecological facets of plastic pollution and ways for each of us to minimize our plastic footprint. And few places have pursed recycling more aggressively than Oregon. See it and share it with others!' What would happen if the corals died off? MONIQUE OXENDER, Chief sustainability officer, Keurig Dr Pepper: I mean, youve got a couple hurdles, in the sense that youre going to have to have people sorting out tiny cups, right? The image of plastics among consumers is deteriorating at an alarmingly fast pace, it says. We wanted to see for ourselves what was happening to the plastic coming here. Plastic Paradise Flashcards | Quizlet The idea behind that particular facility is if we improve the way that recyclables move down the conveyor belt, so they get separated, we're going to create better, cleaner streams of like materials. Do you think that they took a lesson away from how to fight the bans? And yet it's become ground zero for The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, syphoning plastics from three distant continents. Planetsave'Sun offers a fresh, new voice for her generation and has made a film that can appeal to the masses.' Industry wouldnt even consider, say, no triangle, or a circle, or. No transcript available. Step into the world of man-made materials that take up where nature left off. The film provides graphic proof of this phenomenon. [Speaking Indonesian] It used to be only once a month, but now it can be two or three times a week. What items were the least common? People start pollution. Sun, Angela (film director) There's dissatisfaction about what's going on with the solid waste issue." Brand-name companies that used plastic were facing bans on their products. Plastic films, plastic bags, the plastic wrapping that comes around a lot of packaged goods, that all goes into the garbage. Chevron Phillips would like to see all of that plastic recycled back to make new plastic things. There are various types of plastics, and that the cost of new plastic is so low that sorting and reprocessing used plastic cant be justified economically. Earth Day was one of the largest mass protests in U.S. history. The U.S. is now one of the worlds largest plastic producers. Dr. Garen Baghdasarian, Professor of Biology, Chair of Life Sciences, Santa Monica College'Filmmaker Angela Sun tells a compelling story about the plethora of harmful impacts associated with non-degradable plastic, particularly in regard to the marine environment, while recognizing that the properties of plastic have enhanced our quality of life in many ways. ", "We must immediately undertake a major program of unprecedented proportions to reverse this fast-moving tidal wave of growing negative public perception.. Melati and Isabel Wijsen are on a mission to stop plastic bags from suffocating their beautiful island home of Bali. 115 billion pounds. Amazing work!' So they knew that these problems existed. "Give me raw material"that's all they wanted. Timothy Hoellein, Aquatic Ecologist, Assistant Professor of Biology, Loyola University'With fantastic archival footage, revealing modern images from the pacific and thoughtful, fact-based explanation, Plastic Paradise provides an educational, hip, and very entertaining look at some of the many ways plastic is affecting us all. Great Pacific Garbage Patch - National Geographic Society Its the biggest Ive seen. It would. Not a good idea for your wallet. and focus public attention on a growing problem. And yet despite the backlash, the industry that makes plastic is expanding. By 1987, a wandering barge called the Mobro became an emblem of the growing crisis. They cause two problems. [CDATA[ What is the problem? It was, "We need to be doing things.". Plastic Paradise is another documentary on the topic of plastic waste and our oceans. And theres nothing wrong in an industry promoting those kinds of things, but thats not addressing the problem that people are criticizing you about. Construction will eventually employ 6,000 people. Plastics in the ocean have been building up for decades. Flexible packaging has become part of our daily lives. I notice that you guys put the big chasing arrows. Have we made any progress? Waste pickers would look for plastics of value, and the rest would be burned. JIM BECKER, VP, Sustainability, Chevron Phillips: Our view is you have to be very careful with that because sometimes the substitute products can have a bigger environmental impact than the thing you are banning. We said, "Next time try recycling." Angela Sun provides an excellent model of how one curious person can use her talents to follow her interests, speak from the heart, and contribute to improving the world. One internal document from the Society of the Plastics Industry cautioned "the techniques of cleaning and separating the mixed plastics has not been developed for large scale economic application. Will Posegate is the chief operating officer of Garten. While the efforts to change consumer behavior helped clean up the more visible litter problem, they did little to address the root cause. COY SMITH, Former board member, National Recycling Coalition: During that time, the plastics industry, they went around to states and they convinced those states to pass lawsand they did this very quietlythey passed laws that required that symbol with the number on it be put on plastic containers sold in that state. Allaway is a leading authority on the environmental impacts of materials, like plastic. childhood leukemia. This package here is technically recyclable. Thats how unrecyclable it was. Thats what it looks like when it comes in. A PLASTIC OCEAN. Every single piece of this has to be sorted in some way. So, I understand that there's a lot of skepticism around that, because the systems today have not kept pace. The producers know what the environmental impacts of these different formats are, but they don't disclose it. The plastic industry had brought a demonstration project here in 1994. The start of construction on that multibillion-dollar plastics plant. According to the filmmaker, plastic debris collects in this fashion because a combination of gyres (large systems of rotating ocean currents) serve as catchment basins, and debris that would. What does coral treat? The smell of burnt plastic was in the air, and all around, there were sacks of plastic, and big piles, too. The crisis passed. [Expletive] Christ, that is plastic. To appease government officials, the industry funded a local recycling pilot project. STATE REP. LORENA GONZALEZ (D-San Diego): Yeah. Sun, Angela (film producer) Plastic Paradise is an excellent, accessible, and troubling documentary that reveals these issues. Today the American Plastics Council unveiled the machine. But if it's not happening in Oregon, it makes me wonder what's going on in the rest of the country. In 2015, a marine biologist came across a sea turtle in distress. This is plastic that has no home, so it's your clamshells, Ziploc bags, film, a CD, a food wrapper. The common refrain in this whole field is that it's all up to consumers. Id come to see what its archive could tell me about the evolution of the plastic problem. Behind the lens, Angela directed and produced the award-winning feature documentary film "Plastic Paradise: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch" currently on the film festival circuit and set to release later this year. I highly recommend checking this film out!' National Geographic Society is a 501 (c)(3) organization. It provides valuable information and presents that information in an engaging and visually gripping way.' It did a good job of doing what it was asked to do; it made life more efficient and easier. Its a win-win situation. Eleven billion. and fast. The Plastic Paradise of Tokyo's Famous Kitchen Town His company buys throwaway plastic from some of the largest big-box stores in the U.S. CNN.com - Transcripts Because we thought that it was getting recycled gave us the freedom"OK, no problem. Tejal Rao is the California restaurant critic for The Times . They didnt want to go anywhere near no triangle. Anyone may search for titles and find detailed information about the titles. You can see from that corner to the end of that valley over there. They created the Council for Solid Waste Solutions, drawn from their ranks of big oil and petrochemical companies that made plastic, like Amoco, Chevron, Dow and Exxon. Another priority is narcotics. We call it Plasticstown USA. I showed Ron Liesemer industry reports we found dating as far back as the 1970s. They said that the chasing arrows symbol was OK, as long as it was small and on the bottom of packaging. There are a lot of different kinds of plastics that have to be sorted. The film's haunting message highlights the importance of society transitioning to the existing truly biodegradable polymers wherever possible and as soon as possible.' You know, I have looked at that picture and pondered that for decades. Plastic Paradise: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch - Archive Recyclers also appealed to government regulators, but they sided with industry. And in 2018, China stopped taking imported plastic waste. Because we are struggling to clean up the modern debris and modern litter in Indonesia, the additional burden of waste from overseas, I dont know how we are going to handle it. 2023 Plastic Paradise. All rights reserved. Forty years on, despite a plastic crisis thats been getting worse, the industrys future seems bright. For decades, the national response to the growing plastic waste problem has focused on one solution: recycling.