Plastic Read Free Page A

We bury in landfills the same kinds of energy-rich molecules that we've scoured the far reaches of the earth to find and excavate. We send plastic waste overseas to become the raw materials for finished products that are sold back to us. We're embroiled in pitched political fights in which plastic's sharpest critics and staunchest defenders make the same case: these materials are too valuable to waste.
    These paradoxes contribute to our growing anguish over plastics. Yet I was surprised to discover how many of the plastics-related issues that dominate headlines today had surfaced in earlier decades. Studies that show traces of plastics in human tissue go back to the 1950s. The first report of plastic trash in the ocean was made in the 1960s. Suffolk County, New York, enacted the first ban on plastic packaging in 1988. In every case, the issues seized our attention for a few months or even years and then slipped off the public radar.
    But the stakes are much higher now. We've produced nearly as much plastic in the first decade of this millennium as we did in the entire twentieth century.As Plasticville sprawls farther across the landscape, we become more thoroughly entrenched in the way of life it imposes. It is increasingly difficult to believe that this pace of plasticization is sustainable, that the natural world can long endure our ceaseless "improving on nature." But can we start engaging in the problems plastics pose? Is it possible to enter into a relationship with these materials that is safer for us and more sustainable for our offspring? Is there a future for Plasticville?

1. Improving on Nature
    I F YOU GO ON EBAY , that virtual souk of human desire, you'll find a small but dedicated trade in antique combs. Trawling the site on various occasions, I've seen dozens of combs made of the early plastic called celluloid—combs so beautiful they belonged in a museum, so beguiling I coveted them for my own. I've seen combs that looked as if they were carved from ivory or amber, and some that were flecked with mica so they shone as if made of hammered gold. I've seen huge, lacy decorative combs of faux tortoiseshell that might have crowned the piled-high up-twist of a Gilded Age debutante, and tiara-like combs twinkling with sapphire or emerald or jet "brilliants," as rhinestones once were called. One of my favorites was a delicate 1925 art deco comb with a curved handle and its own carrying case; together, they looked like an elegant purse made of tortoiseshell and secured with a rhinestone clasp. Just four inches long, it was surely designed for the short hair of a Jazz Age beauty. Looking at the comb, I could imagine its first owner, a bright spirit in a dropped-waist dress and Louise Brooks bob, reveling in her liberation from corsets, long gowns, and heavy hair buns.
    Surprisingly, these gorgeous antiques are quite affordable. Celluloid plastic made it possible, for the first time, to produce combs in real abundance—keeping prices low even for today's collector who doesn't have a lot to spend but wants to own something fabulous. For people at the dawn of the plastic age, celluloid offered what one writer called "a forgery of many of the necessities and luxuries of civilized life," a foretoken of the new material culture's aesthetic and abundance.
    Combs are one of our oldest tools, used by humans across cultures and ages for decoration, detangling, and delousing. They derive from the most fundamental human tool of all—the hand. And from the time that humans began using combs instead of their fingers, comb design has scarcely changed, prompting the satirical paper the
Onion
to publish a piece titled "Comb Technology: Why Is It So Far Behind the Razor and Toothbrush Fields?" The Stone Age craftsman who made the oldest known comb—a small four-toothed number carved from animal bone some eight thousand years ago—would have no trouble knowing what to do with the bright blue plastic version sitting on