It is down cycled and turned into lesser things, while a glass bottle can be a glass bottle again or can be used again a plastic bottle can never be a plastic bottle again.

At the end of this process, we have a mixed plastic composite many different types of plastics and many different grades of plastics.

It's a bad thing that plastic breaks down into smaller little bits, because it's always still plastic.

He's given a little bottle massage, a little bottle medal.

Upon educating myself a little further about plastics, I actually realized this was a bad thing.

Whenever possible, refuse single use and disposable plastics.

I'm also concerned about the plastic in the refrigerator, and I'm concerned about the plastic and the toxins that leach from plastic into us and into our bodies.

It's plastic pollution.

Moreover, most plastic products are made from so called petroleum based commodity thermoplastics. Given that a non renewable resource forms the basis of many plastic products most of which will not last long current plastics usage patterns are not sustainable.

And if you really look into it, particularly when it comes to plastic bottles, most of it is only down cycled, or incinerated, or shipped to China.

Now because the plastics are so plentiful and by the way, those other methods don't lead to the recovery of plastics, obviously but people do try to recover the plastics.

It's not just that gyre of plastic that I'm concerned about it's the gyre of plastic in the supermarket.

And both in the production of plastic, the use of plastic and the disposal of plastic, the people who have the bull's eye on their foreheads are poor people.

Plastic just is not going to do it.

Recycling of plastic in many developing countries means the incineration of the plastic, the burning of the plastic, which releases incredible toxic chemicals and, once again, kills people.

And the last material I'm going to talk about today is plastic, and, of course, my toaster had to have a plastic case.

I've been working with plastic bags, which I cut up and sew back together as my primary material for my artwork for the last 20 years.

It's mostly many types of plastics and many types of metals.

Plastics have taken the place of many conventional materials.

And in the process, we started recreating how the plastics industry makes plastics.

It's a plastic bag.

The Dirt on Plastic Waste

But if we were to be able to follow that little bottle on its journey, we would be shocked to discover that, all too often, that bottle is going to be put on a boat, it's going to go all the way across the ocean at some expense, and it's going to wind up in a developing country often China.

Now look at that plastic chair.

It's a compound that's found in polycarbonate plastic, which is what baby bottles are made out of.

And in a plastic wrapped and packaged world, he doesn't hold out much hope for that, either.

So I came together with a group of other people who were all looking at this issue, and we created the Plastic Pollution Coalition.

I think in our minds we imagine somebody's going to take the little bottle, say, Oh, little bottle.

It begins to melt below the boiling point of water and does not drive off the oily contaminants for which it is a sponge.

Upon working with the plastic, after about the first eight years, some of my work started to fissure and break down into smaller little bits of plastic.

That bottle winds up getting burned.

Controls your 3D plastic printer

This chair is made of plastic.

This plastic chair is very cheap.

I turn them into two and three dimensional pieces and sculptures and installations.

We must make the utmost effort to reduce the use of plastic packaging, and also to recycle all waste plastic.

Such developments would encourage industry to re use or recycle more parts. Although all 40 kinds of plastics used in a North American automobile can be recycled, the need to separate and clean them makes using them more expensive than using virgin plastic resins.

Although all 40 kinds of plastics used in a North American automobile can be recycled, the need to separate and clean them makes using them more expensive than using virgin plastic resins. This translates into a higher proportion of plastics in the remnants of shredded end of life automobiles a contaminated mixture of plastics and non plastics that is usually disposed of through some combination of landfilling, incineration, and secondary recycling.

In a world that is reliant on plastics, more sustainable production, consumption, and disposal of plastic products is crucial. Civil society, industry, and government must work together to increase the share of recycled plastics, thereby ensuring that plastics costs do not outweigh their benefits.

The little bottle says, I just don't know.

They store the plastics on the roofs.

No thank you, I don't need a plastic bag.

No thank you, I don't need a plastic bag.

They used to use a plastic packaging buffer, but we were able to give them the exact same physical performance with our grown material.

The solution, Moore says, is to stop the plastic at its source stop it on land before it falls in the ocean.