No one would be surprised if a movie called Addicted to Plastic was full of unpleasant facts about plastics. Like the fact that a lot of plastic doesn’t get recycled and winds up in one of five garbage zones in the oceans, called gyres.

The UN says that there are 46,000 pieces of plastic for every square mile of ocean. That’s a lot of plastic. There is 10 times more plastic than plankton in the oceans and some of that plastic looks like food to aquatic life. The little creatures eat the plastic, and the bigger creatures, and bigger creatures, and bigger creatures, eat the smaller creatures successively, like we’ve seen in numerous cartoons, until eventually we humans eat the very plastic we’ve created and thereby poison ourselves. Poetic justice perhaps but cheery thoughts, no.

Let’s go on a bit more. 100 billion pounds of plastic are made into products in the US every year. These plastics are laced with DEHP, pthalates, BPA, white lead, and humans are suffering from abnormal brain and cell development because of it.

But amid the gloom and doom there is hope. Denmark recycles 90% of its plastic bottles because of bottle deposits. In this country, agriculture uses a lot of plastic. Plastic twine is recycled to make new products. A company mixes any and all sorts of recycled plastics to make railroad ties that will outlast wooden ones. Carpet companies recycle. Flip-flops are recycled to make some fantastic products. Likewise with plastic bags upcycled into purses and believe me, they don’t look like plastic bags anymore.

Plastics can be recycled back into a petrochemical, reused in that way. Feeding plastic to the right bacteria negates the harmful effects of the plastic on life. Bioplastics aren’t new but they are now economically feasible. There is a compostable plastic. You can make plastic out of chicken feathers.

The CEO of one company runs water over a bioplastic food container to soften it and then bites off a chunk and eats it because the bioplastic is harmless. That is one of many entertaining parts that make this documentary worth watching.