30 years ago, the president of a French chemical firm introduced a new packaging material to a DuPont representative.

La Celophane, he called it. A year later, the first DuPont made cellophane appear.

Monsanto Chemical Company, Plastics Division, presents the Monsanto House of the Future.

Tomorrow is always built on today, and that is where our story begins.

A story of plastics.

Plastic materials have moved in to stay.

The era of plastics began in the 1950s, but there's been a downside.

America's become the biggest generator of trash in the world.

For decades, consumers were taught that a throwaway culture was justified because of recycling.

But recycling is not living up to its promise.

Remember when the very idea created comforting expectations? Now it's a joke for the Daily Show's host Trevor Noah.

When you think of recycling, you probably think of a magical process where you throw your plastic in the blue bin

and a unicorn takes it away and then nine months later you get a beautiful new baby water bottle.

But the truth is, much like making an actual baby, the recycling process is much messier than what you may believe.

You get the joke and the implication.

Those comforting expectations might have been realistic decades ago, but they're not anymore.

China no longer accepts America's recycled products. The bottom's gone out of the market.

At the same time, the amount of trash is increasing, especially because of single-use plastics,

most of which can't be recycled at all.

Producer John Reed talked to Craig Hample.

He's run the City of Burbank's Recycling Center for 16 years, and he remembers how household

consumers used to be taught what to do. If you go back a little bit in history, a few decades,

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