Plastic can take hundreds of years to break down – and we keep making more | Kim Heacox

Americans throw away an estimated 2.5m plastic water bottles an hour. We need international cooperation to protect our planet and our health

Every great movie has at least one scene that stays with you.

In the 1967 classic The Graduate, directed by Mike Nichols, that scene could be when Mrs Robinson (Anne Bancroft) first seduces our protagonist, young Ben (Dustin Hoffman), a newly minted college graduate. Or when Ben, crazy in love, pounds the glass walls of a church. What haunts me, though, is the earlier scene in which one of Ben's parents' friends offers him some unsolicited advice. The man tells him that a great future" awaits him in one word: Plastics."

Kim Heacox is the author of many books, including The Only Kayak, a memoir, and Jimmy Bluefeather, a novel, both winners of the National Outdoor Book Award. He lives in Alaska