How Big Brands Fooled Consumers With Plastic

'Consumed' reveals the scale of corporate complicity in the proliferation of single-use plastic and the truth about recycling

- Sundeep Khanna

Saabira Chaudhuri's Consumed: How Big Brands Got Us Hooked On Plastic reads like a corporate thriller, except the villains are real and the consequences devastating. It is a gripping, meticulously researched exposé of the insidious role played by giant multinational corporations, such as McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble and Unilever, in embedding single-use plastics into our daily lives.

A seasoned reporter, Chaudhuri traces the rise of plastic over the last 100 years while detailing how corporate greed, deceptive marketing, and unfulfilled recycling promises have fueled a gargantuan environmental crisis for the world.

The questions the book raises are all around us in India as well; in the giant landfills that pockmark our cities. "Why were taxpayers picking up the expense of sending bulky plastic packaging to landfills even though McDonald's was the one choosing to use it?" asks the author. Long-suffering Indians having to live with the toxicity of the giant landfills of Bhalswa in Delhi, Dhapa in Kolkata or Pirana in Ahmedabad, have been asking the same question without any answers.