Film Review: Plastic Paradise: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch
From its alarming introduction to its startling realizations, Plastic Paradise: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch provides some much-needed factual exposure of the environmental impact of plastics and a first-hand glimpse of the continent of trash collecting in the south Pacific gyre currents.
Writer, director and acting protagonist Angela Sun has a vested interest in the discovery of plastic’s true impact on the environment and human health, having been fascinated by the ocean and its inhabitants since a young age while growing up in coastal California. Later, she pursued a career in media and journalism, ultimately becoming the first Asian American female correspondent on sports shows for ESPN, Fox Sports, The Tennis Channel and Yahoo! Sports. Plastic Paradise is Sun’s first feature length documentary and promises to provide an epiphany for many of its viewers.
Sun takes on the roles of investigator, educator, reporter and narrator throughout Plastic Paradise, meeting with field experts in remote areas most affected, such as Midway Atoll in the south Pacific. There, she finds piles of deposited plastic from all over the world that has collected on Midway’s shores, and starts asking important questions: Where is all the plastic coming from? Why does it keep coming? How is it affecting the marine, terrestrial or avian environment? How is it affecting… us?
Her inquiry would take her to doctors’ offices, scientific laboratories, and industry conferences with Big Oil and Big Chemical in attendance. She subjects herself directly to the raw chemicals found in plastics, by participating in a Bisphenol A contamination experiment (believe it or not, you’ve done it, too) and exercises her rights in front of the American Chemistry Council and Society of Plastics Industries in search of answers with her handheld camera.
The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is estimated to encompass an area from twice the size of Texas to the size of the entire continental U.S. These figures are difficult to quantify, as the majority of the “trash island” is just below the surface of the water meaning you would have to “sail through it with a net” to notice it. In fact, much of the “island” consists of microplastics, which are the tiny, broken down pieces of previously larger plastic items, recalling that plastics are not biodegradable.
The production of plastics has grown from 20 million pounds created globally in 1927, to over 115 billion pounds being created in 2014 – just in the U.S. Plastic was originally created during wartime as a viable substitute for several other materials in short supply. Today, much of the plastic produced is intended for single-use and will never naturally degrade. The floating trash eventually collects in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Unfortunately, because plastics are ultimately produced as a byproduct of the oil refining process, the large, and powerful oil companies have an incentive to conceal the negative externalities of their production, consumption and disposal. These include the totality of the environmental degradation and human health consequences resulting from plastics use or consumption, but perhaps the plastic producers’ negligence itself is their chief injustice.
Sun takes us along on her trip around the world collecting witness’ accounts of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, from U.S. Fish and Wildlife representatives to the man credited with its discovery, Capt. Charles Moore, while also providing a history lesson on our plastics obsession as an industrialized nation. This film is not for the faint-of-heart, as Plastic Paradise frequently presents disturbing images to its audience, including Midway Albatross birds being dissected to reveal plastics in their stomachs and the equally sickening ignorance of members of the plastic industry. All in all, once you forgive the film for stealing your own umbrella of ignorance during the downpour of guilt that is Pacific Paradise: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, you will thank Angela Sun for her effort in bringing this reality to light.
Note: Pacific Paradise: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch will be available for digital download on September 16th, 2014 @ amazon.com
