Since childhood in the US, Canada, Europe and many other countries, we have been taught that recycling is one of the keys to preserving our environment.
What if you found out that the myth of recycling is being used by the petroleum industry to further a progressive march of environmental pollution? Plastic pollution has ballooned since the 1970s into one of the biggest threats to our planet today.
These documentaries are a good starting point to learn more about the plastic problem and to share more about this global issue with interested friends and family. We hope you can add them to your watch queue and they help inspire change in your life or whomever you share them with!
Broken: Recycling Sham
Broken: Recycling Sham takes us to Malaysia where single-use plastics line beaches and sprawl for acres across landfills. Many corporations market single-use plastics as recyclable, and this is simply not the case. This episode explores the 'greenwashing' used to mislead consumers, and the true final destination of single-use plastic.
Watch: Netflix
Blue Planet 2
While all of Blue Planet is a must-watch, the final episode of season II is particularly powerful and explores how plastic is slowly killing our sea creatures. It is a hard watch, but an important one - and a study conducted on viewers found that 88% made changes to their lifestyle after watching this episode.
In the words of the great Sir David Attenborough: "Never before have we had such an awareness of what we are doing to the planet and never before have we had the power to do something about that. Surely we have a responsibility to care for our blue planet."
Watch: BBC America, Amazon, iTunes, Netflix
Vice - Garbage Island: An Island Full of Plastic
Vice's Garbage Island: An Island Full of Plastic sees journalists travel to Malaysia, where there is a Texas-sized flotsam of plastic and garbage. "By the time you get to the point where we're hoisting creatures out and eating them, you're looking at entire milk crate's worth of particles built up in their fat. It's the cycle of life reimagined as a dystopian sci-fi cliché. We are eating our own refuse."
Watch: YouTube.