Stop buying things that don’t give you real pleasure. Save the money. You’ll need it when the oligarchs crash the economy again.

Bag It is an affable activist film that does its job: since watching it, I have been conscious of my own use of plastics, paying attention to reducing, reusing and recycling. Without being preachy, the film’s everyman, Jeb Berrier, sets out to discover what’s behind the plastic bag, and along the way shows us the world’s dangerous love affair with disposables. Over 100 billion one-use plastic bags in 2010 alone, plus 300 million paper coffee cups lined with plastic, and product packaging from the United States alone clog storm drains and stuff landfills. They are made to be thrown away. But where is away?