The World Without Us

Marine biologist Richard Thompson has spent his career studying ocean-borne plastic waste at the port of Plymouth in southwestern England. Thompson and his team discovered that beach detritus contains vast amounts of “nurdles”: tiny plastic pellets from which larger plastic products are manufactured. Microplastics are also used to scour paint from boats and aircraft, and in cosmetic exfoliants in place of sea salt or ground-up seeds. Additionally, just as the slow mechanical action of waves and tides gradually turns rocks into sand, it also grinds plastic objects into ever tinier fragments, small enough to be consumed by tiny organisms. Even if all human activity ended tomorrow, Thompson says, marine organisms would be dealing with microplastics for thousands of years.

The first synthetic plastic, Bakelite, was invented by Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland in 1907. His fellow chemists promptly began developing new types of plastic, including polyvinyl chloride (PVC), Styrofoam, and nylon, which, in the form of nylon stockings, contributed to plastics’ widespread popularity in the post-World War II era. The most “world-changing” plastic invention of all, Weisman writes, was “transparent packaging, including self-clinging wraps of polyvinyl chloride and polyethylene, which let us see the foods wrapped inside them and kept them preserved longer than ever before” (119).