When Saabira Chaudhuri began covering consumer-goods companies for The Wall Street Journal, she expected stories about marketing and product launches. Instead, she uncovered a deeper pattern: industrial ingenuity turned liability. Her new book, Consumed, explains how plastic became central to modern capitalism—and why efforts to rein it in have repeatedly faltered. Her reporting began in … Continue reading Plastic’s triumph was no accident. It built an economy addicted to throwaway living.