< http://www.healthandpersonalcare-products.com/the-economical-plastic-bottles-for-sale/ >
viewed 9 May 2016
What is the history of plastic, what came before it, why did plastic become important, how is it made, what are its applications, benefits, drawbacks, what are its implications for design.
What is plastic? The word ‘plastic’ comes from the Greek verb ‘plassein’, which means ‘to hold or shape’, it can refer to any artificial material. This substance has reached so deeply into our everyday life and Susan Freinkel referred this as “…of course, we all live in Plasticville” in her book ‘Plastic A Toxic Love Story’. Plasticville is a term that used in 1950, and it is the name given to kits of plastic buildings, the full name is ‘Plasticville, U.S.A.’.
All plastics have one thing in common which is they are all polymers, it is a Greek term for “many parts” Polymers are made up by thousands of atomic units called monomers linked into giant molecules.
We started living in the world of Plasticville since the mid nineteenth century, but according to Susan Freinkel’s book, she stated others fix the date to 1907 when Leo Baekeland the first fully synthetic polymer, and he said “now we have a fourth kingdom…” We first think plastics are so unnatural, Susan used alien as a metaphor for plastic. Plastic pegged its dawn during 1914, where it was commercially used during World War II, it was increased by 300%. American military pulled polymer chemistry out of the lab into real life. The major plastics we know today: polyethylene, nylon, acrylic, styrofoam all came out during the war.
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viewed 9 May 2016
< http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/p/205402/2247483.aspx >
Susan stated plastics became everything through“…plastic challenged traditional material and won…. Plasticville became possible - and perhaps even inevitable…” (Susan Freinkel, Plastics: A Toxic Love Story, p. 6.) She then calculated the amount of plastics been used in the past seven years , from 0 in 1940 to nearly six hundred billion pounds today. Comparing with 1960 to now, the average of plastics American consumed was about thirty pounds, but today, they’re each consuming more than three hundred pounds per year. Susan then stated Australia isn’t far behind, the average Australian consumes plastics are half of what Americans consumed which is about 150 pounds a year. (Susan Freinkel, Plastics: A Toxic Love Story, p. 8.)
“Humans could disappear from the earth tomorrow, but many of the plastics we’ve made will last for centuries.” (Susan Freinkel, Plastics: A Toxic Love Story, p. 9.) This quote from Susan’s book indicated the power plastics holds in our world now a days.
References:
- < http://www.chemheritage.org/discover/online-resources/conflicts-in-chemistry/the-case-of-plastics/all-history-of-plastics.aspx > The history and future of Plastics,
- Susan Freinkel, Plastics: A Toxic Love Story, 2011, Boston Globe
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