Saabira Chauduri tells how big brands got us hooked on plastic, and explores the pathways out

 

Saabira Chaudhuri is a London-based journalist and the author of Consumed – How Big Brands Got Us Hooked on Plastic. She frequently writes about sustainability, plastics, corporate strategy, environmental regulation and consumer culture. Her work has been published in outlets including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, Bloomberg, The New Scientist, The Guardian, Wired, The Times of India, FastCompany.com, Forbes and Business Insider.

Saabira Chauduri spent 12 years as a staff reporter for the Wall Street Journal in London and New York, stepping down in May 2025. Before that she worked on staff for Dow Jones newswires, Forbes magazine, Mint (the New Delhi-based business newspaper) and Fastcompany.com

Saabira grew up in Bangalore and still returns there as much as she can. She earned a BA in sociology from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts, then spent a year abroad studying law and sociology at the London School of Economics. She was awarded the Wall Street Journal’s fully-funded Asia fellowship to New York University where she earned an MA in Business and Economic Reporting.

Consumed is her first book. It was born out of years of reporting on consumer goods companies’ increasingly difficult relationship with plastic, and it was published by Bonnier Books in May 2025. Consumed was named one of the Financial Times’s Best Books of 2025, longlisted for the FT & Schroder’s Business Book of the Year Award and shortlisted for the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW) Best Business Book of the Year Award. She did the impossible task of researching and writing the book while tending to her two children under two.