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

Well, if that's the case, good. Why hard instead of easy?

It's plastic pollution.

And if that is the case, how come that it's very hard to kill a city?

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.

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 a plastic bag.

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.

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

Controls your 3D plastic printer

business,environment,oceans,plastic,science

And that's a plastic polymer.

The Dirt on Plastic Waste

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

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

Now look at that plastic chair.

Everything came in plastic, in cardboard.

business,global issues,green,plastic,technology

Mike Biddle We can recycle plastic

These boxes are made of plastic.

This chair is made of plastic.

This chair is made of plastic.

This plastic chair is very cheap.

And these are just a few examples of companies that are buying our plastic, replacing virgin plastic, to make their new products.

Van Jones lays out a case against plastic pollution from the perspective of social justice. Because plastic trash, he shows us, hits poor people and poor countries first and worst, with consequences we all share no matter where we live and what we earn. At TEDxGPGP, he offers a few powerful ideas to help us reclaim our throwaway planet.

environment,green,nature,plastic,product design,technology

Eben Bayer Are mushrooms the new plastic?

Van Jones The economic injustice of plastic

Talk about more plastic bags than plankton.

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Dianna Cohen Tough truths about plastic pollution

Plastic explosives Other explosives and their precursors.

I want to make a hard headed, evidence based, dare I say lawyerly case, for rethinking how we run our businesses.

And in this case, I used ABS plastic to produce the columns, we used the bigger, faster machine, and they have a steel core inside, so they're structural, they can bear loads for once.

They have thousands and thousands of plastic bags.

Plastic just is not going to do it.

Capt. Charles Moore on the seas of plastic

We had to replace them with recyclable plastic.

consumerism,global issues,green,mission blue,oceans,plastic

A plastic dish will melt on the stove.

So a lot of people remember the plastic bottle anyway, but we really talked about marine debris and plastic in the course of that one.

We've been talking a lot about the horrific impacts of plastic on the planet and on other species, but plastic hurts people too, especially poor people.

I began to be fascinated by plastic, so I spent four months making eight plastic blocks perfectly optically transparent, as a kind of release of stress.

We automatically throw the little nub of plastic upward.

business,communication,global issues,green,plastic,poverty,science,tedx