Plastic Planet

Werner Boote's grandfather managed a plastics factory in Austria and in Boote's childhood described plastic to him as the material of the future. Years later Boote sets out to see where that material has ended up. The camera goes to factories, laboratories, rubbish heaps and the plastic accumulating in the ocean. The director has his own blood tested, and substances that come from plastic are found in it. The film takes a side openly and presents plastic as a threat both to the environment and to health. It does speak to representatives of the industry, but what they say stays in a defensive position inside the telling. Some of the claims in the health section, particularly the effect of specific additives on people, are areas where the scientific argument is still going on. The part about accumulation and waste in the environment is not contested; the footage there is the film's soundest section.