Plastics Reading & Video List
Videos:
Dirty Money (Season 2) - Point Comfort (Episode 6)
The episode tells the story of a Texas town that at first welcomes a Formosan company that manufactures plastic, only to suffer terrible physical, emotional and environmental damage.
Length: 59 minutes
How to Watch: Available on Netflix
FRONTLINE’S PLASTIC WARS
Suitable for highschool students and up, 55 minutes long
FRONTLINE and NPR team up to examine a mounting crisis: plastic waste in the environment. Despite efforts spreading across the country to reduce the use of plastic, the plastics industry is rapidly scaling up new production and promoting a familiar solution: recycling. But it’s estimated that no more than 10 percent of plastic produced has ever been recycled. Plastic Wars, a joint investigation from FRONTLINE and NPR, reveals how plastic makers have publicly promoted recycling for decades, despite privately expressing doubts that widespread plastic recycling would ever be economically viable.
How To Watch
MICROPLASTIC MADNESS
Suitable for all ages and a great choice for families and people who care about environmental education, 1 hour and 16 minutes long.
Microplastic Madness is the story of 56 fifth graders from P.S. 15 in Red Hook, Brooklyn – living on the frontline of the climate crisis – whose actions on plastic pollution morph into extraordinary leadership and scalable victories. With stop-motion animation, heartfelt kid commentary, and interviews of experts and renowned scientists who are engaged in the most cutting edge research on the harmful effects of microplastics, this alarming, yet charming narrative, conveys an urgent message in user-friendly terms. These eleven-year-olds dive deep into the root causes of plastic pollution. Taking on the roles of citizen scientists and community advocates, they collect local data, lead community outreach, and use their own local data to inform policy by testifying and rallying at City Hall. Then they turned their focus back to school, taking action in their cafeteria to eliminate all single-use plastic! Created to inspire kids, teachers and policy makers alike, this is the spark needed to grow a youth-led Plastic Free Future movement in schools across NYC and beyond!
How To Watch
You can consider hosting your own screening, and check back here for information on future screenings. Screening rights are FREE for Title One K-12 Schools.
Resources
If you are interested in Cafeteria Culture’s free Microplastic Madness curriculum for a plastic free future for grades 4 and up, please sign up here.
STRAWS
Suitable for 6th grade and up, 32 minutes long.
STRAWS is a short documentary by filmmaker Linda Booker released Spring 2017. Half a billion non-recyclable plastic straws get used every day in the U.S., ending up in landfills and on streets and beaches. Academy Award-winning actor Tim Robbins narrates and turtle researchers, community activists and business owners discuss a sea of change happening, one straw at a time.
How To Watch
If you are a teacher or a student, you can sign up to watch STRAWS and three other short films for free along with the option of signing up for an online discussion with Jackie Nuñez, Founder & Program Manager, The Last Plastic Straw, and featured in the short documentary STRAWS, along with other Plastic Pollution Coalition staff. There are many times available to teachers and students for this special virtual viewing engagement offer during the month of April – sign up for one that works for you here. If you would just like to watch the documentary, you can purchase an educational viewing license.
And, if you are planning a home viewing, you can rent STRAWS for 2.99 or buy it for $4.99 and watch anytime that works for you!
THE STORY OF PLASTIC
Suitable for highschool students and up, 1 hour and 35 minutes long.
The Story of Plastic is a seething expose uncovering the ugly truth behind the current global plastic pollution crisis. Striking footage shot over three continents illustrates the ongoing catastrophe: fields full of garbage, veritable mountains of trash; rivers and seas clogged with waste; and skies choked with the poisonous runoff from plastic production and recycling processes with no end in sight. Original animations, interviews with experts and activists, and never-before-filmed scenes reveal the disastrous consequences of the flood of plastic smothering ecosystems and poisoning communities around the world – and the global movement rising up in response.
How to Watch
Click here for screening options
Bonus! Check out these related short videos from the Story of Stuff Project.
The Story of Stuff (click here for the Spanish version) – The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.
The Story of Bottled Water – The Story of Bottled Water tells the story of manufactured demand—how you get Americans to buy more than half a billion bottles of water every week when it already flows virtually free from the tap. Over five minutes, the film explores the bottled water industry’s attacks on tap water and its use of seductive, environmental-themed advertising to cover up the mountains of plastic waste it produces. The film concludes with a call for viewers to make a personal commitment to avoid bottled water and support public investment in clean, available tap water for all.
The Story of Microbeads – This 2-minute short takes on plastic microbeads—the nasty little bits of plastic that companies have been putting in everything from body washes and hand soaps to toothpaste and make up. In it, we show how microbeads are actually designed to go down the drain and into our rivers, lakes, and oceans…and what folks like us can do to stop this ridiculous assault on our public waters.
The Story of Microfibers – Most of us wear synthetic fabrics like polyester every day. Our dress shirts, yoga pants, fleeces, and even underwear are all increasingly made of synthetic materials — plastic, in fact. But these synthetic fabrics, from which 60% of all clothing on earth is made, have a big hidden problem: when they’re washed, they release tiny plastic bits — called microfibers — that flow down our drains, through water treatment plants, and out into our rivers, lakes and oceans by the billions. This 2-minute short explains it all.
BAG IT
Suitable for all ages, 1 hour 18 minutes long.
Americans use 60,000 plastic bags every five minutes-single-use disposable bags that we mindlessly throw away. But where is “away?” Where do the bags and other plastics end up, and at what cost to our environment, marine life and human health? Bag It follows “everyman” Jeb Berrier as he navigates our plastic world. Jeb is not a radical environmentalist, but an average American who decides to take a closer look at our cultural love affair with plastics. Jeb’s journey in this documentary film starts with simple questions: Are plastic bags really necessary? What are plastic bags made from? What happens to plastic bags after they are discarded? Jeb looks beyond plastic bags and discovers that virtually everything in modern society-from baby bottles, to sports equipment, to dental sealants, to personal care products-is made with plastic or contains potentially harmful chemical additives used in the plastic-making process. When Jeb’s journey takes a personal twist, we see how our crazy-for-plastic world has finally caught up with us and what we can do about it. Today. Right now.
How to Watch
Stream via Amazon or Itunes or stream for free via Kanopy using your public library card.
Resources
Curriculum Packet for lessons and classroom activities that meet national education standards for students in grades 4-12, and correlate with chapters within Bag It’s Educational DVD. Chapters and lesson plans focus on Single-Use Disposables; Waste and Recycling; Oceans; Human Health; and Activism. More resources available here.
GASLAND (PART I)
Suitable for highschool students and up, 1 hour and 42 minutes long.
The Halliburton-developed drilling technology of “fracking” or hydraulic fracturing has unlocked a “Saudia Arabia of natural gas” just beneath us. But is fracking safe? When filmmaker Josh Fox is asked to lease his land for drilling, he embarks on a cross-country odyssey uncovering a trail of secrets, lies and contamination. A recently drilled nearby Pennsylvania town reports that residents are able to light their drinking water on fire. This is just one of the many absurd and astonishing revelations of a new country called GASLAND. Part verite travelogue, part expose, part mystery, part bluegrass banjo meltdown, part showdown.
In case you’re wondering why we’re including a movie about fracking, it’s because the vast majority of plastic made in America is now made from a byproduct of fracking (plus chemicals). In fact, the ever-increasing sale of plastics is the oil and gas industry’s plan for how to make up for falling revenues as the demand for fracked gas falls. Plastics and fracking are inextricably linked!
How to Watch
Stream it free via Films for Action or rent it for $3.99 or buy it on iTunes or Amazon.
Resources
Check out this Gasland study guide from the TRIBECA Film Institute
Video information courtesy of Beyond Plastics : https://beyondplastics.org/article/plastic-pollution-film-series/
Open Your Eyes. https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/
Books:
Poynter, Dougie. Plastic Sucks,! How You Can Reduce Single-Use Plastic and Save Our Planet. New York; Feiwel and Friends. 2019.
Terry, Beth. Plastic FREE, How I Kicked the Plastic Habit and How You Can Too. New York; Skyhorse Publishing. 2012.
Sinha, Jay and Plamondon, Chantal. Life Without Plastic: The Practical Step-by-Step Guide to Avoiding Plastic to Keep Your Family and the Planet Healthy. Paige Street Publishing. 2017.
Salt, Rachel. The Plastic Problem. New York; Firefly Books. 2019. (Audience age 8-12)
McCollum, Will. How to Give Up Plastic. New York; Penguin Books. 2019.
Smith-Llera, Danielle. You are Eating Plastic Every Day: what’s in our food?. Mankato,N. Compass Point Books, a Capstone Imprint. 2020. (Audience age 10-12, grades 4-6)
French, Jess. What a Waste: Trash, recycling and protecting our planet . New York, NY. DK Publishing. 2019. (age 6-9)
Ritchie, Scot. Join the No-Plastic Challenge: A First Book of Reducing Waste. Toronto, ONT, Canada. Kids Can Press Ltd. 2019. (ages 4-7)
Paul, Miranda. One Plastic Bag: Isatou Ceesay and the Recycling Women of the Gambia. Minneapolis, MN. Millbrook Press. 2015. (ages 5-9) plastic trash, burning plastic, employment, cleanup, goats eat. Art is made from paper, plastic into collage.
Sarig King, Amy. Me and Marvin Gardens. New York. Arthur A. Levine Books. 2017. (ages 8-12; grades 3-7). Young Readers Fiction.