On March 12, Cindy Kimbell hosts a screening of “Addicted to Plastic” as part of the Salem Progressive Film Series along with guest speakers Angel White and David Allaway.

Filmmaker Ian Connacher woke up one day and realized that his whole life revolves around plastics. "Why is this," he asked himself. "How did it come to be?"

After two years of production, countless firsthand interviews and a trip around the planet, he created a documentary that seemed to pose just as many questions as it supplied answers.

The UN estimates that there are 46,000 pieces of plastic in every square mile of the ocean. This inconvenient estimate is completely supported in the film by Dr. Jan van Franeker of Holland who says that on his home island of Tessel, 20 to 28 lbs. of plastic garbage wash onto every mile of the shore everyday. While some of it comes from fishing vessels, 80 percent of it comes from land.

Because of the natural weather cycle of the Pacific ocean, all of the plastic garbage from Asia and North America drifts out into a small region of the pacific called a gyre or the Eastern Garbage Patch.

Connacher makes a quick stop in Brooks, Oregon to meet with Allen Youngsma of Agri-plas; one of Oregon’s largest recycling plants. Agri-plas processes over 18 million tons of plastic a year, about 15 percent of the states waste.

“I actually went out to the North Pacific Gyre to research the impact that plastic is having on microbes," said White, a research associate at OSU. "Our research didn’t turn up as much garbage as I had heard we would find, but that could be due to a number of reasons like maybe we never found the center or the weather spread the debris out too far."

Connacher claims that out of the 100 billion pounds of plastic U.S. citizens produce every year, we only end up recycling around five percent.

Fortunately, the film does offer some solutions to this ever growing problem.

Some companies are pioneering new and environmentally friendly ways to locally dispose of our “plastic problems.“

Some plastic producers have turned to using plastic materials made from corn that break down much easier than their fossil fuel counterparts. But this seemingly simple solution concerns David Allaway from the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality.

“There are a few areas where I think the film is a little misleading," he said. My largest concerns are the overwhelmingly positive light given to bio-plastics and degradable plastics. They are promoted in the film as essentially harmless. Bio-plastics and degradable plastics may offer some potential, but they also pose some challenges that conventional plastics don’t.”