Interview: Filmmaker Ian Connacher, “Addicted to Plastic”

The documentary “Addicted to Plastic” is the result of three years and over 400 hours of footage that took filmmaker Ian Connacher around the globe seeking answers to the host of problems that surround one of the world’s most ubiquitous materials – plastic. The film takes a very sobering look plastic’s environmental impacts, providing glimpses of the detritus polluting our oceans and contaminating marine life to the human costs of trash pickers in India trying to eak out a living beside burning landfills. But woven into these indelible images, are inspiring stories of people who are trying to find solutions – on all scales – to the rising tide of plastic waste. Connecting it all is the tale of Connacher himself, whose personal journey serves as a stand-in for us all, as he attempts to wake people up to the notion that plastic isn’t going anywhere anytime soon and we better start doing something about it.

After seeing the film at a recent screening in NY, we had a chance to speak with Ian about how “Addicted to Plastic” came about and learn more about rethinking the role of plastic in our lives.

How did the idea for the film originate?

In 2003, I read an article by Captain Charles Moore in Natural History Magazine about his experiences with the North Pacific Central Gyre or Eastern Garbage Patch – one of five floating garbage patches in the world’s oceans. He found that there was six times more plastic than plankton in these waters and this was pretty shocking to me. I was working for Discovery Channel at the time and I had a chance to interview him in Long Beach, CA about how the plastic gets from the land into the sea. We did some sampling of the waters by the LA and San Gabriel rivers and you could literally almost see the line of plastic going out to the ocean. I told him that if he ever went out to the gyre again to give me a call. 

In 2005 he contacted me so I took a whole year off and raised some money. The result was a short film called “Alphabet Soup” about how plastic gets into the food chain and it wasn’t a happy story. As a print journalist for seven years and the environmental guy for the Discovery Channel in Canada one of my biggest pet peeves was that no one ever offers any answers for what we can do to fix these things and I wanted to try and change that. I wrote the treatment for “Addicted to Plastic” and pitched it to the Discovery Channel, but they said no. Then I asked them for some time off to work on the film, but they said no again so I quit and started filming.

I shot for two years and edited for almost a year and felt that this was a compelling story. I knew that it could be relatable because plastic is something that all of us touch every day and we rarely think about the consequences, particularly when it comes to disposability.

Did you have a clear goal from the beginning about how you wanted to frame the film?

Relating it to my own personal journey happened during the editing process. Originally I didn’t shoot any stand-ups or spend anytime in front of the camera. We just wanted to capture as much footage as we could and wound up with over 400 hours, which is probably why it took so long to edit. And during that editing nightmare, one of my editors said to me, “It has to be about you. It can’t just be talking head to talking head. We need to relate it to the average viewer.”

So we presented it that way. Here I am visiting all these locations, seeing the problems and asking the question “what can we do about this?” It was all kind of serendipitous how I wound up being the catalyst for the movie. I don’t like being on camera necessarily, but it worked that way. It’s me, it’s you, it’s all of us seeing all of these things.

You take an interesting look at the idea of recycling and some of these plastic alternatives, somewhat dispelling the myth that these are all great ideas. Can you explain that a bit?

I tried to be really open about that in the film and wanted to make sure that the audience understood that a lot of these solutions don’t necessarily come without their own costs. We talk about something like bio-plastic and we need to start looking at the issues surrounding corn. It’s extremely energy intensive to produce and there needs to be an infrastructure in place to handle the composting etc. But that’s not to say that these things aren’t helping. With the doc we wanted to get this conversation going and investigate some of these so-called answers to the plastic problem. 

How has the filming of this documentary changed your own feelings about plastic?

By no means am I anti-plastic. I think it’s a great material, but it’s all about how we’re using it and misusing it. I’ve always kind of been the guy with the knapsack at the store and the reusable coffee cup, but after making this film what really struck me was this idea of toxicity, “what’s really in the plastics we’re using?” After speaking with endocrinologists and toxicologists, I’ve become much more aware of which types of plastics I’m buying. And of course now, my eyes are like magnets for plastic everywhere which made me realize how truly pervasive it is. If anything, that’s what I want people to take away from this experience, is to wake up and see the world through this lens.

After people see the film and absorb all of this information, I’m sure they feel overwhelmed about what they should do next. What do you tell them?

Again, not to sound redundant, but I think the little things like buying certain products in bulk, taking a reusable bag to the supermarket and knowing what plastics you’re buying can add up to a big difference on a consumer level. And I hope that maybe someone sees this and decides to get a recycling program going at their own company or works in government and wants to pass legislation that remedies the way industries are doing things. At the end of the day, I’m just a filmmaker and what I think I can do well is tell stories that can get people inspired and motivated behind these issues.

Is their one lasting image that will stay with you from this film?

I think what I take away most from the doc are the individuals – whether it’s the woman making bags out of salvaged plastic in India or people staring clean-up initiatives around the world – there’s a ton of people that are trying to fix this problem, many with very little money and just a lot of passion. And that’s what really resonated with me, that together we can figure out a way to fix this thing. There are just so many amazing people out there trying to make a difference.

Thanks, Ian.

You can see “Addicted to Plastic” when it debuts on the Sundance Channel Tuesday, April 28th at 10pm.