mid-nineteenth century.
In the case of rubber, the Olmecs
developed different formulas for using
rubber as far back as 1600 B.C.,
but Charles Goodyear brought the vul-
canization process – a chemical process
used to harden rubber – into the coming
Industrial Age, patenting it in 1844.
This discovery led to a revolution in
combs, of all things.
Next came celluloid, which was con-
sidered the first thermoplastic. It was
pliable at higher heat, and because it
solidified upon cooling, it was useful for
many applications. Celluloid was first
patented as Parkesine in 1862 by
Alexander Parkes and from there, mor-
phed through a few different phases.
The introduction of Parkesine to the
planet is generally regarded as the birth
of the plastics industry.
In 1863, a New York billiards suppli-
er offered a $10,000 prize – in gold, as
the story goes – to anyone who could
come up with an alternative for using
ivory to make billiard balls. Upper-class
society in Europe and the U.S. had
developed a taste for billiards and every
mansion and estate had a table. It was
also becoming popular in growing urban
areas. A concern was growing that this
desire for billiards would hasten the
extinction of the elephant, as up to one
million pounds of ivory were consumed
every year, much of which was used in
billiard balls. 1869, John Wesley Hyatt,
inspired by the contest to find a substi-
tute for ivory in the billiard balls (and
having acquired the patent from Parkes),
came up with a usable substance and
called it celluloid.
Although celluloid didn’t work for
the billiard ball, it did work for combs.
Celluloid enabled items to be formed
and colored to look like marble, tor-
toiseshell, semi-precious stones, or rich
colors like ebony black and lapis lazuli.
Hyatt’s pamphlet stated that “celluloid
[has] given the elephant, the tortoise,
and the coral insect a respite in their
native haunts; and it will no longer be
necessary to ransack the earth in pursuit
of substances which are constantly grow-
ing scarcer.”
Celluloid was a small but significant
turning point for plastic, because it
began to level the playing field in
consumer goods, democratizing “a host
of goods for an expanding consump-
tion-oriented middle class,” as historian
Jeffrey Meikle pointed out in his cultur-
al history, American Plastic. However,
because celluloid was chemically
unstable – factories were fraught with
fire – and labor-intensive, its popularity
was short-lived and technology
advanced to combat the problem.
Bakelite was next in the plastic fami-
ly tree. Patented in 1909, it was the first
on, scientists…sought “to rearrange
nature in new and imaginative ways”.”
Plastic’s place in the world was set and
its growth was exponential. Cellulose
acetate, polystyrene, nylon, polyethyl-
ene, and later Teflon and Kevlar are
Tierra G rande Master Naturalist highway cleanup
wholly synthetic plastic, and had game-
changing characteristics of electrical
nonconductivity and heat resistant
properties, making its use practical and
far-reaching throughout industries. It
also had the ability to be precisely mold-
ed into almost anything, of any size,
including, of course, combs.
“The creation of Bakelite marked a
shift in the development of new plas-
tics,” says Susan Freinkel in her book
Plastic: A Toxic Love Story. “From then
some of the offspring of Bakelite.
Just before World War II, a pair of
British chemists wrote a piece about
how plastics would offer salvation from
the uneven distribution of wealth due to
their inexpensive mass-production:
“Let us try to imagine a dweller in the
‘Plastic Age,’” Victor Yarsley and Edward
Couzens wrote. “This ‘Plastic Man’ will
come into a world of colour and bright
shining surfaces...a world in which man,
like a magician, makes what he wants for
almost every need.” They envisioned him
growing up and growing old surrounded
by unbreakable toys, rounded corners,
unscuffable walls, warpless windows, dirt-
proof fabrics, and lightweight cars and
planes and boats. The indignities of old age
would be lessened with plastic glasses and
dentures until death carried the plastic
man away, at which point he would be
buried “hygienically enclosed in a plastic
coffin.”
Although the chemists’ vision of a
material utopia was delayed by war,
afterwards the factories used for plastics
in war production turned to making
plastic conveniences for the masses,
which democratized consumer goods; a
middle-class and consumer age was
formed.
Fast forward to present day: We are
now citizens of a “Plastic Age,” although
maybe not what those chemists had in
mind. Plastic is everywhere. In our
homes, in our cars, in the ever-growing
landfills, in the woods, on the moun-
tains, it fills the oceans, our food is pack-
aged in it, rumor has it plastic is in our
food now via the nano-plastics in the
food chain….
But wait – this is depressing, isn’t it?
Why do we write of such things in the
Cenizo Journal, a literary magazine that
contains the beauty and quirkiness of
the Big Bend region between its pages?
Because although the Big Bend area is
vast and remote, we’re still citizens of the
Plastic Age. We cannot escape. We’re all
consumers, and plastic is the base for
convenient living. Dwellers and visitors
to these sparse islands of civilization may
be even more dependent upon plastic
for transport and packaging than city-
dwellers. Really, how could we live Out
Here without plastic?
We didn’t invent plastic, and we may
not have many choices about the make-
up of goods, and there’s no reason to
demean the situation we’re in, nor cast
away our love of plastic amenities. But
what can we do about it? Well for one,
we could NOT LITTER. For another,
we do have choices of how to dispose of
things. It’s called RECYCLING.
Without sunlight and air, even news-
papers won’t degrade. All those things
that you put into your plastic kitchen
garbage bag…. Well, they’ll still be
around in some form when a future
continued on page 10
Cenizo
Second Quarter 2019
9