Plastics: What Are They Good For?
Louise Dennis · Edinburgh University Press eBooks · 2023
In order to understand the relationships individuals have with plastics today, it is useful to reckon how people related to those materials in the past. Thus, the author traces the history of consumption to the 1950s, when the post–World War II society was encouraged to consume products to facilitate economic growth and to improve their lives more generally. Disposability, the notion of using something once and then throwing it away, grew to become a sign of wealth and cleanliness as consumers were encouraged to use disposable products. This has led to certain new meanings of plastic: the popular understanding that plastics are low value and therefore disposable, Dennis argues, has been built up over a history of misuse of long-lived materials as short-lived products. The author examines the value placed on plastics through an exploration of their uses and misuses, their consumption and, significantly, their conspicuous non-consumption, and how consumers relate to products made from them at the end of their useful life.