2009 AFI Dallas Film Festival - Addicted to Plastic / Eco Trip: Cotton Shirt

(USA, 2008, 53 mins)
Digibeta
World Premiere
Directed By: Ian Connacher

Preceeded by 'Eco Trip: Cotton Shirt'

Ian Connacher takes on the pervasiveness of plastic, debunking myths about recycling and showing what scientists and industrious world citizens are doing to tame the damage done by this man-made, non-biodegradable substance.

He follows the Algalita Marine Research Foundation as they pluck plastic from a whirling gyre in the Pacific, showing us that the concentration of plastic in the water is as much as 10 times the amount of plankton. He exhibits the plastics industry in America, where only five-percent of plastic is recycled. He ventures to India, where dump dwellers and small business people turn plastic waste into art. And he shows us scientists who are trying to take the same waste and turn it into usable products.

Connacher’s film puts to rest the idea that it’s OK to use plastic because “it’s recyclable.” But he also shows us solutions and alternatives that we need to heed before we and everything around us is buried under mountains of the toxic trash.

Information from the festival's website