Book contents
17 - Plastic in the Time of Impasse
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 October 2023
Summary
Plastic cracks time.
—Heather DavisHad you happened to spend some time in early 2021 on the American Chemistry Council website, you might have come across “Lifecycle of a Plastic Product,” a contemporary iteration (since removed) of that curious sort of biography known to literary historians of the eighteenth century as the it narrative. Granted, the text presented under this heading did test the sense and strain the credibility of “lifecycle” as concept and promise: what you would have encountered was less an integral story of plastic’s key moments, whether in life or in cycle, and more a congeries of disparate, discontinuous plastic factoids starting with “Overview,” meandering through process and type, then landing, unceremoniously, at “End Life” and a time-saving flurry of bullet points. Midway through this haphazard congeries, however, came a section entitled “Plastic Uses” that, while offering no real purchase on the matter of “lifecycle,” did manage in its opening paragraphs to throw into relief some telling symptoms of what one could call the plastic condition. “Whether you are aware of it or not,” observed the American Chemistry Council’s anonymous polymer biographer, “plastics play an important part in your life.”
Plastics’ versatility allow [sic] them to be used in everything from car parts to doll parts, from soft drink bottles to the refrigerators they are stored in. From the car you drive to work in to the television you watch at home, plastics help make your life easier and better. So how is it that plastics have become so widely used? How did plastics become the material of choice for so many varied applications?
The simple answer is that plastics can provide the things consumers want and need at economical costs. Plastics have the unique capability to be manufactured to meet very specific functional needs for consumers. So maybe there’s another question that’s relevant: What do I want? Regardless of how you answer this question, plastics can probably satisfy your needs.
If a product is made of plastic, there’s a reason. And chances are the reason has everything to do with helping you, the consumer, get what you want: Health. Safety. Performance. And Value. Plastics Make It Possible.
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- Plastics, Environment, Culture, and the Politics of Waste , pp. 338 - 360Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2023