Single-Use Planet - An investigation into plastics

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"A remarkable interrogation of the 'miracle stuff' called plastic."

Imre Szeman, Professor of Human Geography, University of Toronto-Scarborough

Single-Use Planet

A film by Steve Cowan

59 and 25 minute versions | English SDH captions | Scene Selection

Discussion and Education Guide

Narrated by Peter Coyote, Single-Use Planet features entertaining animation and musical interludes that help illustrate the connections between public health, plastics production, and industry influence on government policy.

Plastic is vital in so many ways to our modern way of life and well-being — but not all forms of it. In search of why more and more single-use plastic debris enters the ocean despite all efforts to recycle, Single-Use Planet goes upstream to where millions of tons of raw plastic are being made amidst the ruins of America’s bygone steel industry in Pennsylvania.

Further upstream, we see the economic and political realities that have boosted the new industry — realities reaching all the way to rural Louisiana where plans are laid to build the biggest plastic plant in the world. Can the powerful industry be persuaded to temper their production of single-use plastic? Our search leads to Washington D.C. — where a federal bill to regulate the industry remains stalled — and finally to France, where the prohibition of campaign donations by corporations may provide a key to the effective reduction of plastic pollution.

Single-Use Planet is now available on DVD with public performance rights for purchase and rental by schools, libraries, and other organizations. Academic streaming can be licensed from Docuseek. Campus and community groups interested in hosting a community screening can book now through Bullfrog Communities.

“Single-Use Planet does a great job of showing another dimension of the plastics problem, emphasizing the link between plastic use and the petrochemical industry producing this material. Viewers are shown the social and environmental impacts that oil extraction, plastic production and plastic use have, and the inequitable distribution of these impacts. This film also showcases how flaws in the United States political system allow industries with negative consequences to communities and the environment to persist and thrive with little resistance.”

Erin Murphy, Program Lead for Pollution and Environmental Policy, Center for Biodiversity Outcomes, Arizona State University

“Combining interviews, environmental overviews, and engaging animation the film exposes the disconnect between the public concern with plastic waste in the environment and the massive growth of plastic production in the U.S. Single-Use Planet is an authentic lens into communities struggling to limit pollution and environmental harm caused by petrochemical production and natural gas fracking. In examining the constellation of factors in the omnipresence of single-use plastic the film does a convincing job of explaining the powerful political trifecta that residents are up against: elected officials, industry lobbyists, and campaign financing.”

Barbara Allen, Professor of Science, Technology, and Society, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Author, Uneasy Alchemy: Citizens and Experts in Louisiana's Chemical Corridor Disputes

“Single-Use Planet brilliantly documents how plastics are forever, their ubiquity rooted in the deadly intersection of the oil and gas and petrochemical industries with powerful politicians, state governments and lobbyists that support, through subsidies and lax regulation, a deadly chemical industry. Whether in in Beaver County, Pennsylvania or St. James Parish in Louisiana, the story is the same: massive state subsidies, evasion of environmental regulations, cover ups, horrifying ecological harms, and devastating health impacts. Single-Use Planet is a powerful portrait of the plastics crisis but also shows how communities, activists, researchers and reformers are fighting to stem the tide.”

Michael Watts, Professor Emeritus of Geography, University of California-Berkeley, Author, The Curse of the Black Gold