Consumed cover art

Consumed

How Big Brands Got Us Hooked on Plastic

Preview
This Season's Biggest Deal

$0.99/mo for 3 months + $20 Audible bonus voucher

Auto-renews at $8.99/mo after 3 months. Cancel anytime.
Get this deal
Offer ends on 28 December, 2026.
More purchase options

Consumed

By: Saabira Chaudhuri
Narrated by: Saabira Chaudhuri
Get this deal

Auto-renews at $8.99/mo after 3 months. Offer ends 28 December, 2026. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $27.83

Buy Now for $27.83

This Season's Biggest Deal | $0.99/mo for 3 months + $20 Audible bonus

Auto-renews at $8.99/mo. after 3 months - terms apply.
Summary
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 clamoring 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.©2025 Saabira Chaudhuri
Business Ethics Earth Sciences Economics Environment Environmental Economics Science Workplace & Organisational Behaviour Habits
No reviews yet
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.