A Final Thought: Life Before Plastic
What began as a wartime innovation evolved into a defining feature of modern life—one that reshaped how we make, use and discard nearly everything.
I was born in the early 1960s, so I don’t remember a time before plastic, but I do recall there being much less of it during my childhood.
The need for synthetic alternatives during WWII led to innovations like nylon and plexiglass, but it wasn’t until the “Disposable Shift” of the 1950s that plastic was marketed as a better, more carefree way of life. This was in contrast to the Depression-era slogan: “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” People in the 1930s could not imagine buying something, using it, then throwing it away.
In the 1960s and ’70s, plastic really came of age. Advances in molding enabled faster production of single-use items, leading to plastic replacing paper, glass and metal for bottles, packaging and bags. No longer did we kids go pillaging Royal Crown Cola bottles to return to the store to earn a few cents by getting back the deposit.
In 1976, plastic officially surpassed all other materials in production volume.
A trip to an antiques store reveals how little plastic there was before the 1950s. Walking the aisles you’ll find many items made of glass, metal and wood. Here’s a deeper look at the materials used in manufacturing before plastic. All of them are natural materials made from animals, vegetables and minerals:
- Packaging: Glass bottles, wax-paper bags, tin cans, cardboard boxes, and woven baskets were standard.
- Housewares and Tools: Buckets, cups, dishes, and basins were made of galvanized steel, zinc, glass, enamelware and porcelain. Combs and buttons were crafted from animal horn, tortoiseshell or bone.
- Toys & Games: Toys were constructed from wood, tin, cast iron, rubber and felt made of wool from sheep, camel or alpaca.
- Clothing and Textiles: Natural fibers such as cotton, wool, linen and silk were used, along with leather for shoes, jackets and accessories.
- “Natural Plastics”: Before synthetic plastics, items were molded from natural polymers like amber, gutta-percha and shellac (used to make buttons, jewelry and phonograph records). Gutta-percha, by the way, is derived from Malaysian Palaquium trees, while shellac is made from the hardened, protective secretions of the female lac bug in the forests of India and Thailand.
Seriously. Hence the name “she-lac.” I can’t imagine how many tiny lady lac bugs it would take to make a phonograph record.
Plastic, too, is derived from plants and animals, except they’ve been dead for millions of years. Plastic comes from fossil fuels—crude oil and natural gas.
And making it isn’t easy.
Take polyvinyl chloride (PVC), for example. It’s the world’s third-most widely used plastic. The pipes under your sink are probably PVC, as are your vinyl windows and your luxury vinyl tile flooring.
To produce it, you must combine chlorine and ethylene. Here’s how that happens. (Caution: science ahead!)
Saltwater undergoes electrolysis, which separates the chlorine from the salt. Ethylene is produced through “steam cracking,” a process in which petroleum is heated to really high temperatures in a furnace, causing larger hydrocarbon molecules to “crack” into smaller ones.
The chlorine and ethylene are then combined to form ethylene dichloride, which is converted into vinyl chloride monomer (VCM) at high temperatures. The VCM is then pressurized and fed into reactors containing water and suspending agents, where it is polymerized to form tiny white PVC particles. The resulting PVC resin is dried and then mixed with additives to create the final, usable PVC material.
Whew. This process is a lot more complex than scraping lac bug secretions off trees in the forests of Thailand.
You can learn a lot about plastic by looking at the recycling labels on various containers. These labels usually feature a chemical abbreviation and a number code. The most common are PET 1 (or PETE 1), HDPE 2, and PP (5).
PET 1 is used to make the water bottle you are drinking from, as well as the polyester shirt you are wearing as you take each sip. HDPE 2 is stronger and is used for milk jugs, detergent bottles, shampoo containers and plastic lumber. PP 5 is heat-resistant and often used for microwave-safe food containers.
There are more types, including EPS-6, which I hesitate to mention because it’s used to make the single worst invention ever conceived by the human brain, with the possible exceptions of artificial intelligence and the guillotine:
Styrofoam packing peanuts.
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