lineâaided surely by a flood of products such as pink flamingos, vinyl siding, Corfam shoesâplastic's penchant for inexpensive imitation came to be seen as cheap ersatz. So audiences knew exactly why Benjamin Braddock was so repelled when a family friend took him aside for some helpful career advice: "I just want to say one word to you... Plastics!"The word no longer conjured an enticing horizon of possibility but rather a bland, airless future, as phony as Mrs. Robinson's smile.
Today, few other materials we rely on carry such a negative set of associations or stir such visceral disgust. Norman Mailer called it "a malign force loose in the universe ... the social equivalent of cancer."We may have created plastic, but in some fundamental way it remains essentially alienâever seen as somehow unnatural (though it's really no less natural than concrete, paper, steel, or any other manufactured material). One reason may have to do with its preternatural endurance. Unlike traditional materials, plastic won't dissolve or rust or break downâat least, not in any useful time frame. Those long polymer chains are built to last, which means that much of the plastic we've produced is with us stillâas litter, detritus on the ocean floor, and layers of landfill. Humans could disappear from the earth tomorrow, but many of the plastics we've made will last for centuries.
This book traces the arc of our relationship with plastics, from enraptured embrace to deep disenchantment to the present-day mix of apathy and confusion. It's played out across the most transformative century in humankind's long project to shape the material world to its own ends. The story's canvas is huge but also astonishingly familiar, because it is full of objects we use every day. I have chosen eight to help me tell the story of plastic: the comb, the chair, the Frisbee, the IV bag, the disposable lighter, the grocery bag, the soda bottle, the credit card. Each offers an object lesson on what it means to live in Plasticville, enmeshed in a web of materials that are rightly considered both the miracle and the menace of modern life. Through these objects I examine the history and culture of plastics and how plastic things are made. I look at the politics of plastics and how synthetics are affecting our health and the environment, and I explore efforts to develop more sustainable ways of producing and disposing of plastics. Each object opens a window onto one of Plasticville's many precincts. It is my hope that taken together, they shed light on our relationship with plastic and suggest how, with effort, it might become a healthier one.
Why did I decide to focus on such small, common things? None have the razzle-dazzle that cutting-edge polymer science is delivering, such as smart plastics that can mend themselves and plastics that conduct electricity. But those are not the plastic things that play meaningful roles in our everyday lives. I also chose not to use any durable goods, such as cars or appliances or electronics. No question any of these could have offered insights into the age of plastics. But the material story of a car or an iPhone encompasses far more than just plastics. Simple objects, properly engaged, distill issues to their essence. As historian Robert Friedel notes, it's in the small things "that our material world is made."
Simple objects sometimes tell tangled stories, and the story of plastics is riddled with paradoxes. We enjoy an unprecedented level of material abundance and yet it often feels impoverishing, like digging through a box packed with Styrofoam peanuts and finding nothing else there. We take natural substances created over millions of years, fashion them into products designed for a few minutes' use, and then return them to the planet as litter that we've engineered to never go away. We enjoy plastics-based technologies that can save lives as never before but that also pose insidious threats to human health.