User Reviews

Plastic China is unlike any environmental documentary I have seen before. It does not waste its screen time giving you big scary numbers and graphs. It's almost like I got invite to stay with theses people for a few weeks. It's a simple movie but, A complex subject. This movie starts off with the showing of mountains upon mountains of trash and the families that work and live among this mess. At first, I thought that some guy was going to talk throughout the film staying why this is bad and go bag free. But no, this movie trusts that you know that already and that you know that there are people in the world that live like this. The documentary actually stars an 11-year-old girl name Yi-Jie who works sorting out trash with her parents miles away from her home town. Yi-Jie is also the oldest child and has to help take care of her siblings with one being a newborn. There is no main story line just a couple of small life events. Boss wants to send his four-year boy to a preschool but at first could not afford it. By the way, Yi-Jie does not go to school because her Dad, who also drinks, think he can not afford it in the city. He is wants to save money for a train ticket to send her back to her hometown to go to a free school with her uncle. The two families the boss and Yi-Jie's work on low wages and keep dreaming about buying better things like cars, phones, and computers. They even go to a car show and someone said these cars equal almost ten years of work in the trash field. But when Yi-Jie Dad thinks that he has enough money for a train ticket, he goes to the station only to find out that he is short. There is no happy ending, no big reveal, or surprise. Yi-Jie goes back to what she knows best, picking up trash.

The film clearly shows why China wants to stop collecting the worlds trash. In the big cities there are entire areas that do nothing but trash sorting. This affects kids and grown ups health. All Yi-Jie and her siblings do all day is play in trash and breath in the smoke from the burning plastic. Even though Yi-Jie does not go to school, she learns from all the paper and books that end up in their trash. On the surface it seems like fun to find an American candy bar, German bags, and Russian cloths all day. I was laughing at the fact that these children use the resources that they have with such an imagination. However, the grown ups know what they do is hurting them and, they think that buy bigger and better things will be worth all that hard work. After they are done with that bigger and better thing, they will throw that away for someone else to sort. It is a cycle and China is now making its own trash because of the amount of middle-class people now. The boss wants what other people have, to use more resources. He wants to be the one tossing the trash not picking it up. Because you can not do both. This movie does show you the result of too much plastic being brought to China. This movie teaches you to be happy for what you have and to watch what you throw away because it may end up in a child's hand.

In the film "Plastic China", two Chinese families are documented for surviving off the work of recycling plastic waste. Though recycling is known as a good deed, this film shows the hardships these families and the Chinese people live with. They suffer from a lack of access to education and health issues that stem from the garbage and harsh conditions in which they live. Not only are the people suffering from health concerns, but the environment also faces pollution and fish are dying in the local community. The film shows how harsh plastic waste can truly be, which in my opinion is not what I was expecting to see. The recycled materials we throw away end up in landfills in China and creates more of a mess than we intended. I would rate this film very informational, yet also very sad to see how people live around the world.