Consumed: How Big Brands Got Us Hooked on Plastic

Shortlisted for the SABEW 2025 Best in Business Book Awards
Longlisted for the Financial Times and Schroders Business Book of the Year Award

"This book will change the way you see the world—and could change the world itself." — Chris van Tulleken, bestselling author of Ultra-Processed People

"Chaudhuri does a mighty job of showing how plastic came to take over our lives, and why we have repeatedly failed to curb it." — Financial Times

"A must-read for anyone who buys anything plastic." — Michael Moss, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Salt, Sugar, Fat

"Sharp research and a gripping story." — Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, co-founders of Ben & Jerry’s

"Fantastic reporting! This book will entertain you even as it raises your blood pressure." — Bill McKibben, bestselling author of The End of Nature

"Eye-popping, engaging, and rigorous." — Mike Berners-Lee, author of There Is No Planet B

"An important and engaging read." — Adam Alter, bestselling author of Irresistible

Over the past seventy years, McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and other global consumer goods giants have harnessed single-use plastics to turbocharge their profits. They’ve spent billions convincing us that we need disposable diapers, cups, bags, bottles, shampoo sachets, and ultra-processed foods.

We were never asking for any of this—but this shift toward disposability has fundamentally reshaped our daily lives. From toddlers kept in diapers far longer than before to our obsession with bottled water and on-the-go snacks, plastic has infiltrated every corner of modern living. Once we shaped plastic—now plastic shapes us.

Like any addiction, this dependency has consequences. It’s harming our climate and biodiversity, and only now are we beginning to grasp its impact on human health.

How did plastic take over our lives? And why have we failed to control it? In Consumed, Chaudhuri investigates the forces that got us here and exposes why the same failed solutions keep resurfacing. By understanding this history, we can finally demand accountability from the brands that got us hooked—and reclaim the future from the plastic that consumes us.