About the Book: Major consumer goods companies like McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, P&G, and Unilever spent seventy years and billions of dollars harnessing single-use plastics to turbocharge profits and fundamentally transform daily habits. Though consumers didn’t initially demand these items—such as bottled water, disposable diapers, and packaged snacks—the shift toward disposability meant that plastics eventually began shaping human behavior and lives. This “plastic addiction” carries severe consequences, damaging the climate, biodiversity, and human health. “Consumed” investigates this history, explaining how plastics took over and why attempts to rein them in have failed. By understanding this past, the book aims to arm readers to demand better solutions from the brands responsible for creating the dependency.