Founder’s Briefs: An occasional series where Mongabay founder Rhett Ayers Butler shares analysis, perspectives and story summaries.
When Saabira Chaudhuri began covering consumer goods companies for The Wall Street Journal, she expected stories about marketing and product launches. Instead, she uncovered a deeper pattern: industrial ingenuity turned liability. Her new book, Consumed: How Big Brands Got Us Hooked on Plastic, explains how plastic became central to modern capitalism — and why efforts to rein it in have repeatedly faltered.
Her reporting began in 2018, when public concern about single-use plastics was rising, Chaudhuri says in an interview. Bags, bottles, straws and cups — once symbols of convenience — had become icons of waste. Companies scrambled to look responsible, promoting recycled content and biodegradable packaging. Yet as Chaudhuri dug deeper, she saw that most “solutions” were flawed or else messaging recycled from decades earlier, designed to protect disposability.
Plastic’s rise was no accident. It delivered lightness, durability, malleability and, above all, cheapness. It made supply chains global and habits disposable.
The coffee cup tells the story well: paper cups collapsed under heat until a thin plastic lining solved the problem after World War II. Suddenly, coffee was portable, and by the 1950s it was the top-selling beverage in the U.S. The pattern repeated across diapers, shampoo, ultraprocessed food, and fast fashion.
Advertising cemented this shift. Since the 1920s, manufacturers linked throwaway living with modernity, hygiene and freedom. Industry-backed recycling campaigns soothed guilt while doing little to stem waste. “Our throwaway culture rests on the idea that what we already have isn’t good enough,” Chaudhuri notes.
She also traces moments when change seemed possible. In the 1980s, the Mobro 4000 garbage barge, laden with 3,000 tons of trash, sparked outrage. Regulators threatened bans, companies promised compostable packaging, and the industry funded a multimillion-dollar PR push. The promises faded, but the campaign worked. Plastic’s dominance deepened.
For Chaudhuri, the real leverage lies with brands. She recalls McDonald’s counsel Shelby Yastrow, who pushed through unbleached bags despite supplier resistance. Once the company acted, compliance spread quickly. The lesson: brand owners, when pressured, can transform supply chains in ways individuals cannot.
Younger generations may hold the key. With social media reach and sharper awareness of health risks — from microplastics in organs to chemicals linked with cancer — they are better positioned to reject greenwashing and demand structural change. Technology alone won’t suffice. Biodegradable plastics are often false fixes. What’s needed is a reckoning with convenience, profit and the culture of disposability.
Consumed argues that plastics are not inherently villainous, but they have enabled an economy hooked on throwaway living. The crisis is cultural as much as environmental. As Chaudhuri puts it, lasting solutions will require nothing less than “a cultural reset.”
Read the full interview with Saabira Chaudhuri here.
Banner image: Cover of the book Consumed by Saabira Chaudhuri.
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