Consumed

How Big Brands Got Us Hooked on Plastic

Saabira Chaudhuri

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Paperback

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English

BONNIER
09 September 2025

Reportage & collected journalism; Business ethics; Mathematics & Sciences

Over the past seventy years, McDonald's, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Unilever and other consumer goods makers have harnessed single-use plastics to turbocharge their profits. They've poured billions of dollars into convincing us we need disposable diapers, cups, bags, bottles, shampoo in sachets and plastic-packaged ultra-processed foods.

We were never clamouring for any of these items, but this shift towards disposability has fundamentally transformed our daily habits. Think of toddlers kept in disposable diapers for far longer than their parents wore cloth, our obsession with bottled water and our insatiable appetite for convenient snacks and coffee. While at first we shaped plastics, somewhere along the way, plastics took over and began shaping us.

Like any addiction, our plastic habit has consequences. It is damaging our climate and biodiversity and we are only just starting to understand its effect on our own health.

How did plastic take over our lives? And why have we been unable to rein it in? In investigating how we got here, Consumed arms us to make better decisions about where we go next. It is only by understanding this history that we will stop accepting the same failed solutions and demand better from the brands that got us hooked on plastic in the first place.

By: Saabira Chaudhuri
Imprint: BONNIER
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 154mm, Spine: 33mm
Weight: 526g
ISBN: 9781785122163
ISBN 10: 1785122169
Pages: 368
Publication Date: 09 September 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Saabira Chaudhuri has covered consumer goods companies for the Wall Street Journal for the past decade, reporting on plastics, waste and sustainability, among other topics, from the US, India, UK and elsewhere in Europe. She has an MA in business and economic reporting from New York University and a BA in sociology from Mount Holyoke College. Saabira lives in London with her husband, two children and dog. She grew up in Bangalore, India, where she first developed her fascination with what we throw away.

Reviews for Consumed: How Big Brands Got Us Hooked on Plastic

'This book will change the way you see the world and could change the world itself' CHRIS VAN TULLEKEN, BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF ULTRA-PROCESSED PEOPLE 'A must read for anyone who buys anything plastic' MICHAEL MOSS, PULITZER PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR OF SALT, SUGAR, FAT 'Eye-popping, engaging and rigorous' MIKE BERNERS-LEE, AUTHOR OF A CLIMATE OF TRUTH 'As alarming as it is entertaining ... brilliant' HUGH FEARNLEY-WHITTINGSTALL, HOST OF WAR ON PLASTIC WITH ANITA AND HUGH