By Patti Wood

In Mike Nichol’s iconic 1967 film “The Graduate,” the character played by Dustin Hoffman is given one single word of advice from a helpful neighbor regarding his future.

“Plastic,” says the neighbor.

The joke was that at the time the movie was made, the word plastic was understood to mean something cheap, sterile and inconsequential – certainly not something for a young college grad to aspire to.

Today the word plastic has taken on another meaning for a new generation of college grads, and one which they can’t be happy about. Because the word now represents the hubris of mankind, the disregard with which we treat the natural world and our apparent collective inability to change or adapt our behavior even in the face of significant harm.

No doubt plastic is a miracle product. In 1907, Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland discovered that the chemical compound phenol could be combined under heat and pressure with formaldehyde gas to create a cheap, lightweight, almost unbreakable material that could be made into a wide range of consumer products. A relatively recent invention at the time, the telephone, was one of the first to be mass-produced using the material called “bakelite.”

Baekeland’s discovery opened up a new and exciting field of chemistry, and soon laboratories around the world were humming with activity, experimenting with combinations of fossil fuels and chemicals, creating new materials never seen before. Different combinations, many of them containing chemicals highly toxic to humans in their raw form, could yield materials that seemed to defy nature itself. New companies were formed to market the new discoveries, churning out amazing products that would revolutionize the way we live.

One of the greatest characteristics of the new products was that they were virtually indestructible. Things made from plastic could be broken into smaller pieces, but unlike products made from wood or metal or other natural materials, no combination of sun, rain, wind, biology or ocean waves could return them to their original state.

Another undeniable virtue of the new plastic materials was their low cost to manufacture, making plastic items cheap for consumers. And because they were cheap (and marketing being what it is), we were encouraged to throw away any plastic product that had broken or outlived its usefulness.

Apparently, few people viewed these two ideas as incompatible with the natural world. Throwing away something that was indestructible meant that every single piece of plastic ever created was going to remain on the Earth somewhere, in some form. Anything made of plastic was forever.

They say that hindsight is 20/20, and in retrospect the manufacturers and purveyors of plastic (or the government that regulates them) should have been more vigilant in developing and implementing some kind of “return” system so that plastic products wouldn’t be so easily released into the world. And perhaps then we might have seen the handwriting on the wall.

Because not only has our entire world –­ our air, our water, our food and yes, our bodies – become contaminated with tiny pieces of plastic, but now we’re learning that the toxic chemicals we believed were safely baked into plastic where they couldn’t escape, are also being released into our air, water and food, where they are impacting all life forms.

Well, you think, if we just collect all the plastic in the world, we can prevent further devastation of the environment. But it turns out that’s not as easy as it sounds. The plain truth is plastic recycling doesn’t work, and it’s worth noting that the industry knew this a long time ago. Crushing it releases microplastics into the air in tremendous quantities. Burning it releases toxic gases. Piling it in landfills eventually releases some of those same toxic chemicals into the environment as it degrades into smaller and smaller pieces. Trying to make energy out of used plastic by burning it under high temperatures has turned out to be a complete bust.

And once it’s created, it’s hard to make plastic into something else. Just as you can’t extract the eggs or the milk from a baked cake, you can’t take the chemicals out of plastic. Once it’s been manufactured under intense pressure and heat into a plastic bottle or plastic straw or television housing, it can’t be turned into a recycled product without creating even more chemicals.

The plastic industry is acutely aware of the problem it has created for the world and the public relations nightmare that is creeping up on it. The ad agency for the plastic industry has come up with a multimillion-dollar campaign to try to convince Americans that plastic can be part of a clean and sustainable future. At the end of its current television commercial, a happy family dumps their used plastic into a beautiful blue recycling container as if their problem is solved. It’s not.

This summer millions of people will celebrate “Plastic-Free July,” a worldwide effort to address the plastic problem and seek other ways of conducting our lives that reduce or eliminate the use of single-use plastic. Take your own re-fillable cup or bottle to Starbucks or Dunkin. Ask the produce manager in the supermarket if you can have your zucchini without the Styrofoam tray and plastic wrap. Refuse the plastic bag at the store. Do not, do not, do not, buy drinking water in plastic bottles. Spend a few more pennies and support businesses which are packaging their products in reusable or biodegradable materials.

And remember: money talks. Wherever you can, stop buying things in plastic if you have an alternative. Talk to suppliers and store owners about their own use of plastic and whether they are trying to find alternatives.

And the next time you touch a plastic item, remember that it will be here on Earth long after you are gone, creating an environmental health crisis for someone else, your own children and grandchildren among them.