A Brief History of How Plastic Has Changed Our World | National Geographic

Plastics are being used to such an extent throughout the world that we may well ask what was used before its discovery. Before 1950, plastic was barely a part of American life. So how did our culture become so plastic?

Modern plastic didn't really get its start until World War II, when the military realized how versatile it could be. If you're old enough to remember the old-fashioned glass windscreens, this is what happened when you banged your nut: yeah, huge improvement there! But after the war ended, plastic companies needed to find new ways to sell their products, both cheap and powder.

Plastic is now being dramatically applied to peacetime living in hundreds of beautiful and useful ways. And so, plastic went from protecting cargo to protecting our leftovers. Food stored in baggies, plastic bags always have the sound of freshness. And nylon went from the skies to our thighs; they stretch better to fit better. And of course, my mama done told me, she told me: "Huh, we're having a party! A Tupperware party!"

People went absolutely crazy for plastic, and a new plastic decorator container put them in a polyethylene plastic bag. And to brighten up the plastic tree, plastic decorations! Nowadays, everything can be made in plastic. This was where our addiction began.

For decades, Americans had a make it do or do without mentality, but our new throwaway culture fell in love with single-use plastics and didn't worry about the consequences. Vinyl and asbestos on the floor embrace sun, sea, and sky colors—oh, the irony! During the 60s, global plastic production increased 400%, and by 1979, we were producing more plastic than steel.

But people were starting to worry about plastic's side effects. The exposing animals to BPA resulted in serious ailments that signaled problems in humans. We were suspicious of acrylonitrile because it's chemically related to vinyl chloride—utter nonsense.

Side note: they were talking about these bottles specifically, which were created by Coca-Cola and Monsanto in 1975. And surprise! Acrylonitrile is toxic, and it was used in food and beverage containers for three decades. It was finally banned in 1977, and the bottles were taken off the shelves.

As the research was stacking up, so was the garbage. Due to a landfill shortage, a ship nicknamed the garbage barge made headlines in 1987 after it wandered the shorelines for months looking for a place to dump its trash. And it got people talking.

Did it seem odd to you that for such a large country, we were having trouble with our garbage while we're drowning in this stuff? So, we added a fourth R: reduce, reuse, recycle, refuse.

In 2007, San Francisco banned two plastic bags; they end up as a litter problem. The city has to spend tens of millions of dollars cleaning up that little problem. They get in the ocean, and they're ingested by marine mammals, turtles—they cause huge problems there. The measure would require stores to offer only bags made of recyclable paper, reusable cloth, or new bio bags that can be turned into compost.

Powerful plastic lobbies freaked out, worrying that the trend would catch on and spent millions trying to overturn the statewide bill. In 2015, they also successfully lobbied states to preemptively ban plastic bag bans under the guise of protecting the consumer and the grocery stores. And so, the plastic bag remains, as does our plastic addiction.

In 2014, one hundred billion plastic bags were used in the US—that's almost one per person per day! We're still consuming plastics at a breakneck pace, even though we can literally see the toll it takes on our environment and wildlife.

So far, some 700 species of marine animals have been reported to have eaten or been entangled in plastic. Scientists estimate that by 2050, virtually every seabird species on the planet will be eating plastic. Currently, only about 1/5 of all plastics get recycled, but it's going to take more than recycling to fix our plastic problem.

We'll need to stop using so much of it in the first place. If we want to save our world and ourselves, we have to decide: planet or plastic?