Our homes and workplaces can be kept clean in less time and with less effort because of plastic. The plastic era, only about forty years old, has seen the emergence of many forms of plastic, each one suited to a variety of uses. Plastic is a petroleum-based product. Its only other distant rival is aluminum. Together they have taken over the functions previously reserved for more traditional materials - stone, wood, glass, clay, and natural fibre.
Plastic is the material of the molecular age.
It is light, strong, clean, adaptable, and capable of taking on the new forms required by modern technology. Take the plastic garbage bag, for example. Forty years ago, plastic garbage bags were unknown. Now they sit at night along the sidewalk as if they owned the place. A new form is born, a new shape, a new silhouette, a new texture.