Consumed: how big brands got us hooked on plastic

By:

Chaudhuri, Saabira

Publication details: Blink Publishing London 2025Description: xxvi, 403p., note., 22 cm X 14 cmISBN:

9781785129353

Subject(s):

-- business & economics -- business ethics -- environmental economics -- plastic manufacturing -- corporate practices

DDC classification:

363.728

Summary: Summary:'Over the past seventy years, McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Unilever and other consumer goods makers have harnessed single-use plastics to turbocharge their profits. They've poured billions of dollars into convincing us we need disposable diapers, cups, bags, bottles, shampoo in sachets and plastic-packaged ultra-processed foods.We were never clamouring for any of these items, but this shift towards disposability has fundamentally transformed our daily habits. Think of toddlers kept in disposable diapers for far longer than their parents wore cloth, our obsession with bottled water and our insatiable appetite for convenient snacks and coffee. While at first we shaped plastics, somewhere along the way, plastics took over and began shaping us.Like any addiction, our plastic habit has consequences. It is damaging our climate and biodiversity and we are only just starting to understand its effect on our own health.How did plastic take over our lives? And why have we been unable to rein it in? In investigating how we got here, Consumed arms us to make better decisions about where we go next. It is only by understanding this history that we will stop accepting the same failed solutions and demand better from the brands that got us hooked on plastic in the first place.

List(s) this item appears in: New Arrivals 1 Sep 2025

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Holdings
Item type	Current library	Call number	Status	Barcode
Books	KEIC	363.728 (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Available	23956

Recommended by: Rasananda Panda

Summary:'Over the past seventy years, McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Unilever and other consumer goods makers have harnessed single-use plastics to turbocharge their profits. They've poured billions of dollars into convincing us we need disposable diapers, cups, bags, bottles, shampoo in sachets and plastic-packaged ultra-processed foods.We were never clamouring for any of these items, but this shift towards disposability has fundamentally transformed our daily habits. Think of toddlers kept in disposable diapers for far longer than their parents wore cloth, our obsession with bottled water and our insatiable appetite for convenient snacks and coffee. While at first we shaped plastics, somewhere along the way, plastics took over and began shaping us.Like any addiction, our plastic habit has consequences. It is damaging our climate and biodiversity and we are only just starting to understand its effect on our own health.How did plastic take over our lives? And why have we been unable to rein it in? In investigating how we got here, Consumed arms us to make better decisions about where we go next. It is only by understanding this history that we will stop accepting the same failed solutions and demand better from the brands that got us hooked on plastic in the first place.

Contents:
Prologue: The Wandering Garbage Barge
Part I Plastics Under Pressure
Chapter 1 Throwaway Living
Chapter 2 The Million Dollar Boys' Club
Chapter 3 McToxic
Chapter 4 Talking Shit
Part II The Fightback
Chapter 5 Hefty's Claims Turn to Trash
Chapter 6 Plastics Make it Possible
Chapter 7 The Chasing Arrows
Chapter 8 The Garbologist
Part III Supercharging Consumption
Chapter 9 Making a Market of the World's Poorest
Chapter 10 Farewell to the Age of Ecology
Chapter 11 Taken Captive
Part IV The New Plastics Backlash
Chapter 12 The Last Straw
Chapter 13 The Future of Plastics is Not in the Trash Can
Conclusion: What Can I Do?

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