That is plastic.

That's plastic.

Plastic does not break easily.

Plastic is the defining feature of cheap electrical goods.

They store the plastics on the roofs.

Plastic just is not going to do it.

Non degradable plastics in a garbage dump in Karachi.

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

We had to replace them with recyclable plastic.

We grind the plastic down to about the size of your small fingernail.

Plastic is one of the largest pollutants in the worlds oceans today.

They manufacture plastics. They use large quantities chloroprene and benzene.

Mike Biddle We can recycle plastic

The traditional way to make plastics is with oil or petrochemicals.

Plastic in landfills lasts for hundreds of years.

The waste is separated into recyclable materials (plastics, metals) and organic waste.

will never gather up all the plastic and put the ocean back together again.

But actually, plastics are several times more valuable than steel.

And any plastic can be any color, as you probably well know.

I knew it was plastic but it tasted like wood.

And you can actually make plastic from obviously oils which come from plants, but also from starches.

So I looked up a plastic so I decided that I could mine some of this modern day rock.

I knew it was plastic but it tasted like wood.

Once in the food chain, plastic then works it s way up the food chain and eventually ends up on the human dinner table.

And they said this one friend of mine said, I've got one word for you plastic.

Now most people think that's because plastics are a throw away material, have very little value.

Moreover, goods imported from Central Asia are much better than the plastic from Italy, Spain, and Turkey.

Women who make it to the front of the line strap huge bundles wrapped in plastic, weighing anywhere from 100 200 pounds, across their shoulders.

So this is a unit with the 12 petals These petals cost about a dollar each they're lightweight, injection molded plastic, aluminized.

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

And because we're not breaking down the plastic into molecules and recombining them, we're using a mining approach to extract the materials.

Mostly coal, Chuluunbaatar says, but some people tend to burn other things, tires, plastics, you know.

And the plastics, we get from oil, which we go to more remote locations and drill ever deeper wells to extract.

We use a very highly automated process to sort those plastics, not only by type, but by grade.

Increasing that number will depend on making drop off more convenient and expanding options for giving plastic a second life. In New York, where a statewide ban on backyard or farm burning of plastics was passed in 2009, the Cornell program worked with the state s Department of Environmental Conservation to pioneer agricultural plastics recycling and do educational outreach about recycling options through extension programs and local soil and water conservation districts.

Well, when you start working on issues like plastic, you realize that the whole thing is connected, and luckily most of us are blessed to have two arms.

They recover the metals and leave behind what's called shredder residue it's their waste a very complex mixture of materials, but predominantly plastics.

And sometimes they'll resort to what's known as the burn and sniff technique where they'll burn the plastic and smell the fumes to try to determine the type of plastic.

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.

The last thing we need is hazardous waste from other countries adding to the problem, especially when this waste can be infected and cause diseases such as hepatitis and AIDS.

They bring them below those roofs into small workshops like these, and people try very hard to separate the plastics, by color, by shape, by feel, by any technique they can.

Farmers in cooler regions use plastic to enhance warmth, for example, while in the southern U.S. farmers use plastic to cool soil and plants.

They extract what they can, which is mostly the metals circuit boards and so forth and they leave behind mostly what they can't recover, which is, again, mostly the plastics.

A peasant village raided a hospital dumpster to reclaim discarded surgical equipment, wash it in a nearby canal, re package it in sealed plastic saying sterilized, and sell it back to the hospital at cut rate prices.

Just when you think you are getting used to it, your eyes can't help but be impressed by the large amount of plastic bags everywhere, even along the most beautiful sea coasts and, in particular, on the wonderful scenic Route de Pêche (Fishing Road).