Plastic is everywhere, and a big reason why it's super inexpensive.

Often the cheapest option is plastic, but is it really when you look at the enormous health and environmental impacts?

I argue that it's not.

It's Wednesday, April 24th, and it also happens to be Science Friday.

I'm SciFRI producer Kathleen Davis.

One of the biggest environmental issues that we face today is plastic, which isn't just about everything.

It's in our packaging, electronics, and even our clothes.

The use of plastics has skyrocketed over the past 50 years, so the current state of our

plastic world can seem a little bit grim. But there are good things happening to address

our plastics crisis. Here's guest host Maggie Kerth. Judith Ank is a former EPA

regional administrator and president of Beyond Plastics based in Beddington, Vermont. Judith,

welcome to Science Friday. Maggie, it's so good to be with you and I just want to start off by saying,

yes, it's a daunting problem, but plastic pollution is completely solvable.

That is extremely relieving to hear. I mean, you know, I've been trying to use less plastics,

but there are some things like dish detergent, for example, that it's just now difficult to

find packaged in any other way.

So let's start off with some of the basics. What even is plastic and how did we end up using so much of it?

Plastic historically was made from chemicals in oil. It's now made from chemicals in ethene, a byproduct of hydrofracking.

So the reason why we are all seeing so much more plastic in our lives, nothing we voted for, by the way, is because of the glut of

hydrofract gas. And engineers have found a way to capture some of the waste from hydrofracking and use it to make new plastics.

Also, plastics are cheap for the fossil fuel industry. It's not cheap for our health or our planet,

but if you are a company that packages a lot of consumer products, typically the only question

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