Industrial plastic production is just 1 generation old and in just a generation plastic has reached from almost non existent outside labs to literally everywhere in the Earth.
What is true is that plastic wasn’t such an everyday feature of the developing world until the last few decades, and it was the combination of increasing plastic use and lack of organized rubbish collection that led to plastic-strewn streets and polluted waterways there.
Was commissioned by an industrialist selling plastics, but is rather high-end for and ad ! Worth watching. I love HN for this kind of unexpected discoveries.
Plastics were regarded as a miraculous material in the 1950s.
We have lots of examples like that, for instance lots of people complain when "a couple" refers to any number other than two, and yet common usage is for it to be pretty synonymous with the more obviously vague term "a few".
Another reason to be strict with output and flexible with input.