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.
Plastic bags are silent, odourless, and easily handled.
The plastic family is enormous. Pages could be filled with the names of its members. In the synthetic field alone you have Nylon, Orlon, Dacron, Vinyl, etc. Windproof, water-proof, weightless, and colourful, these fabrics, with their familiar dry rustle, are a highly visible part of our life and lifestyle. What is more, they are reasonably inexpensive and have made the human scene more colourful than it has been for centuries.