Early in my career, I did a ton of reporting on the plastic problem.

Why there was so much of it, how the industry operated, the PR guys who created fake front

groups for plastic manufacturers, it was a lot of the same stuff the oil and gas guys

had done.

Which makes sense because it was mostly the same companies making plastic.

But at a certain point I shifted my focus away from plastic partly because it seemed

like a problem that was being solved.

The public was aware of the problem.

There were various alternatives to plastic being embraced, even consumer behavior was changing.

Now to California where a new law will ban single use plastic bags at grocery and convenience

stores.

Instead of buying a plastic tube of toothpaste then throwing it away or recycling it, maybe,

you can now buy toothpaste tablets that come in this little compostable paper packet.

It's called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

I like that.

In the Pacific Ocean, contains plastic waste twice the size of Texas that's big.

And then a few years ago I started to see more and more plastic everywhere.

Restraused stores my kids school.

And I wondered what had happened to shift the course of things so dramatically.

Had I missed some kind of policy change, had some celebrities had something pro plastic.

But it also jumped out of me because it was so similar to what had happened on climate

change during the 90s.

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