Rethinking plastics

Alexander Parkes patents the first plastic products in 1862. Parkesine is made from cellulose – a natural product – and is mouldable when heated and keeps its shape when cooled. It is costly to produce so it is not widely used.

John Hyatt obtains Parkes’ patent and creates celluloid to make billiard balls. Celluloid is largely used in the movie and photographic film industries prior to the 1950s.

Image courtesy of Science History Institute. Philadelphia. Set of Celluloid Billiard Balls in Wooden Box. Circa 1880.

Auguste Trillat immerses casein in formaldehyde to create Galalith. It is used in the fashion industry to make buttons and costume jewellery. Galalith is still used to create buttons today.

Leo Baekeland patents Bakelite – the first totally synthetic plastic. It is heat resistant, and its properties make it an ideal electrical insulator. Bakelite is soon used in goods ranging from telephones to chess pieces. We still use it to make saucepan handles and electrical components.

Image: An iron with Bakelite handle. Electric Iron “Moderne”, circa 1936, New Zealand, by NEECO [National Electric and Engineering Company]. Purchased 1995. Te Papa (T000647)

Jacques Brandenberger patents Cellophane (from the words cellulose and diaphane – transparent). The thin, see-through sheets are used to package food, allowing consumers to see the items before purchasing them. We still use cellophane in sticky tape, gift wrap and packaging.

The term ‘plastic’ is introduced to describe the new group of compounds that are becoming more widely used. Its roots are from the Latin word ‘plasticus’ (to mould) and from the Greek word ‘plastikos’ and ‘plassein’ (to form).

Although PVC has been a commercial product for several years, Waldo Smith and the BF Goodrich Company find a way to make it flexible. Nearly a century later, it is widely used in water and wastewater pipes, gutters and downpipes, medical tubing and more.

Rowland Hill and John Crawford use polymethyl methacrylate to create a safer alternative to glass. They register the product under the trademark Perspex. Otto Röhm creates a similar product, trademarked as Plexiglass.

Image: In a publicity shot, a worker finishes the Plexiglass nose section of a B-17F navy bomber at the Douglas Aircraft Company plant, 1942.

Ralph Wiley discovers polyvinylidene chloride (PVDC) while developing a drycleaning product. It is initially used for military purposes and is then reformulated to become cling film/plastic wrap. (LDPE later replaces PVDC as food wrap.)

Michael Perrin creates a practical method to produce polyethylene. It becomes the most common plastic produced in the world. HDPE (RIC number 2) is used to make milk jugs and bottles. LDPE (RIC number 4) is used to make plastic bags and squeezable bottles.

Roy Plunkett discovers polytetrafluoroethylene (PFTE) by accident while working with refrigerants. PFTE is trademarked as Teflon in 1945. A few years later, Collette Grégoire convinces her husband to put Teflon on her cooking pans, and they create a product still in use today.

American company DuPont releases a nylon-bristled toothbrush in 1938. A year later, it introduces women’s nylon stockings at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Nylon fibres soon become popular for dress fabrics, carpets, tents and may other products.

Ray McIntyre and Dow Chemical Company produce a lightweight water-resistant material, patenting it as Styrofoam. Polystyrene is currently used for many purposes. Rigid or moulded polystyrene is used for food and drink containers, while foam and expanded polystyrene is used in packaging and building insulation.

Image courtesy of Science History Institute, Philadelphia. Advertisement for Styrofoam, 1963. Dow Chemical Company Historical Image Collection.

Earl Tupper purifies polyethylene slag, a waste product, and moulds it into lightweight unbreakable kitchen items known as Tupperware.

ABS – a thermoplastic polymer – is patented in 1948 and introduced commercially in 1954. This plastic is best known for its toughness, which is the reason LEGO chooses ABS when designing and patenting its trademark bricks in 1958.

Stephanie Kwolek creates a new strong heat-resistant synthetic fibre. It is first used to strengthen racing tyres. Kevlar is used for personal protection in the military and in sports and in many other applications.

Swedish company Celloplast patents what will become the ubiquitous plastic shopping bag. Made of HDPE, the design is called “the t-shirt plastic bag”.

The first flexible plastic IV bag is released for commercial use. The bag allows for closed transfusions and reduces the risk of contamination. Single-use plastic items soon replace many of the multi-use glass and/or metal items once used for medical tasks.

Outdoor clothing company Patagonia begins to use recycled bottles to create its fleece clothing. Plastic bottles are cleaned, melted, stretched and woven into fabric.

Image: Hillary Rodham Clinton is pictured in her Patagonia fleece jacket with her husband and Sox the cat.

Kiwifruit grower ZESPRI collaborates with Scion to produce a bioplastic spife (spoon-knife) made out of kiwifruit residue in 2012. Prototype biospifes are introduced at a trade show in the Netherlands. They are a hit with European businesses and consumers interested in reducing their plastic footprint. Production scales up, and biospifes become available for consumers in 2017.

Scion scientists have developed PolBionix biodegradable pots, which offer an alternative to the estimated 350 million plastic pots produced by New Zealand nurseries each year. Once in the soil, the pots provide fertilser to the plants as they degrade