We sort the plastic fragments into different size classes, from five millimeters to one third of a millimeter.

It's a full figure cast from myself.

We're molded by the same life force.

Right molded you say, with iron?

At the end of this process, we have a mixed plastic composite many different types of plastics and many different grades of plastics.

Upon working with the plastic, after about the first eight years, some of my work started to fissure and break down into smaller little bits of plastic.

i have a cap from plastic

They're plastic they last and last.

And in the process, we started recreating how the plastics industry makes plastics.

Talk about more plastic bags than plankton.

Plastic? Sewing? Meat?

Plastic does not burn easily.

Plastic does not break easily.

Our plastic has become their diet.

And that's a plastic polymer.

In the shelters built by the U.N., they were just providing a plastic sheet, and the refugees had to cut the trees, and just like this.

It's mostly many types of plastics and many types of metals.

Prepackaged meals may come with a disposable plastic spork.

It's a piece of plastic with a Radio Shack antenna attached to it.

Plastics take hundreds to thousands of years to biodegrade.

Capt. Charles Moore on the seas of plastic

They store the plastics on the roofs.

Plastic is so permanent, so indestructible.

They are integral to our modern day lifestyle.

Plastic just is not going to do it.

I just basically gnawed all this stuff out of plastic.

They manufacture plastics. They use large quantities chloroprene and benzene.

Similarly, the mixer housing can be made of metal or plastic.

They use large quantities chloroprene and benzene.

Well perhaps some rectangular pieces of plastic with strange symbols on them.

It's just a hollow piece of plastic with an antenna that swivels around.

Well, Lakha. You seem to cut your hand more than you chop wood.

And instead of plopping down several hundred million dollars to build a chemical plant that will only make one type of plastic for its entire life, our plants can make any type of plastic we feed them.

Mike Biddle We can recycle plastic

And this becomes the currency of the plastics industry.

Plastics are also hard to recycle.

The world of plastics is present everywhere.

Now look at that plastic chair.

People use plastic everywhere.

But actually, plastics are several times more valuable than steel.

The teachers dragged giant PVC whiteboards into the classrooms.

And these are just a few examples of companies that are buying our plastic, replacing virgin plastic, to make their new products.

And sometimes they'll resort to what's known as the burn and sniff technique where they'll burn the plastic and smell the fumes to try to determine the type of plastic.

Eben Bayer Are mushrooms the new plastic?

This discovery formed the foundation of the modern plastics industry.