50 Fun Facts About Plastic

Galalith, an early plastic adopted by the fashion industry, was made from a protein in which food?

Milk supplied the casein that formaldehyde turned as hard as horn, and the trade name comes from the Greek for milk stone. In 1913 Germany alone used thirty million litres of it this way.

Bubble wrap was invented in 1957 by two men who were trying to create a textured plastic version of what?

Wallpaper was what Alfred Fielding and Marc Chavannes had in mind. Their flop found its calling as padding for IBM's new 1401 computers on the way to customers.

John Wesley Hyatt's 1860s plastic came from chasing a $10,000 prize for an ivory substitute in what?

Billiard balls were using up so much ivory that Michael Phelan put up the reward in 1863. Hyatt's company went on to turn out false teeth and piano keys as well.

Which country issued the world's first modern plastic banknotes in 1988, the year of its bicentenary?

Australia developed the notes with its national science agency, CSIRO, and by 1996 had given up paper money altogether. Romania became the first European country to follow, in 1999.

Which country became the first to ban thin plastic bags, in 2002, after they were blamed for floods?

Bangladesh acted after littered bags were blamed for floods that submerged two-thirds of the country between 1988 and 1998.

Which everyday treat is usually built on a base of synthetic rubbers and plastics such as polyvinyl acetate?

Chewing gum was traditionally made from chicle, a natural tree latex. Makers moved to synthetic gum bases when chicle could no longer meet their needs.

Sea turtles often swallow drifting plastic bags because they mistake them for which of their natural prey?

Jellyfish make up almost the whole diet of the leatherback turtle, so a bag drifting in the water looks like a meal.

Which plastic toy craze of 1958, sold by Wham-O, gave Phillips Petroleum a market for its new Marlex?

Hula hoop sales gave Phillips Petroleum a market for a tough plastic that two of its chemists, Paul Hogan and Robert Banks, had invented in 1951.

The Bank of England's first plastic banknote, the 2016 £5, drew protests because it contained traces of what?

Animal fat, in the form of tallow, turned up in the new notes and angered vegans and several religious groups. In 2017 the Bank announced that future notes would keep using it.

At a bottle-recycling site in Sakai, Japan, scientists discovered which kind of organism feeding on plastic?

A bacterium, named Ideonella sakaiensis after the city, can break down the plastic of drinks bottles and live on what is left. It was isolated from a community of microbes at the site.

Which plastic, developed in New York in 1907 and used for early telephones, was the first fully synthetic one?

Bakelite resists heat and does not conduct electricity, which made it the natural choice for radio casings and light-bulb sockets. Leo Baekeland made it from phenol and formaldehyde.

Which DuPont material, first sold in a toothbrush in 1938, became a sensation in women's stockings two years later?

Nylon stockings sold 64 million pairs in their first year on the market. During World War II almost all production was diverted to the military for parachutes and cord.

Which slippery plastic, discovered by accident in 1938 by chemist Roy Plunkett, went on to coat frying pans?

Teflon had a secret first job in the Manhattan Project, coating valves and seals in pipes that carried highly reactive uranium hexafluoride at the Oak Ridge enrichment plant.

Which fibre, developed by chemist Stephanie Kwolek in 1965, is five times stronger than steel for its weight?

Kevlar was first sold in the early 1970s as a replacement for steel in racing tyres. Kwolek's group had set out to find a light, strong fibre for tyres, and bulletproof vests followed.

Which transparent wrapping film was invented by a Swiss chemist inspired by wine spilled on a restaurant tablecloth?

Cellophane is made from plant cellulose rather than oil, and its name blends cellulose with diaphane, meaning transparent. Jacques Brandenberger had built a machine to make it by 1912.

Which clear plastic, sold as Plexiglas and Perspex, formed the aircraft canopies and gun turrets of World War II?

Acrylic was first brought to market in 1933 by the German firm Röhm & Haas. Both sides in the war also used it for submarine periscopes.

Which tough transparent plastic is used to make compact discs, riot shields and bullet-resistant windows?

Polycarbonate scratches easily, so spectacle lenses and car headlamp covers made from it are given a hard coating. It is also moulded into swimming goggles and police helmet visors.

Which plastic is expanded into the lightweight white foam used for packing peanuts and disposable cups?

Polystyrene foam is 95 to 98 per cent air, which is why it weighs so little. Styrofoam, strictly speaking, is a trade name for a denser foam board made to insulate buildings.

Which plastic, marked with the number 1 inside the recycling triangle, is used for most soft drink bottles?

PET is the very same substance as the polyester in clothing, and only the name changes with the use. More than 60 per cent of it is made into fibres instead of packaging.

Which brand of plastic food containers, launched in 1946, became famous for being sold at parties in customers' homes?

Tupperware parties let women of the 1950s earn an independent income without holding a regular job. Earl Tupper, a former DuPont chemist, made his first container in Leominster, Massachusetts.

Which chemical element forms the backbone of the long chain molecules in almost every plastic?

Carbon atoms link into the long chains, and the side groups hanging from them give each plastic its character. Silicones are the odd ones out, with backbones of silicon and oxygen.

Which name do chemists give the small molecules that link by the thousand into the long chains of a plastic?

Monomers can be toxic even when the finished plastic made from them is harmless. Almost all of them start out as petrochemicals.

More than half the weight of PVC plastic is chlorine, which industry extracts from which everyday substance?

Salt dissolved as brine is split by electricity to release the chlorine, which makes up about 57 per cent of PVC. The same chlorine makes PVC-coated wires slow to burn.

Phthalates are chemicals blended into plastics such as PVC mainly to make them what?

Flexible PVC owes its softness to plasticisers, and 80 to 90 per cent of the world's supply goes into that one plastic. Without them it is the rigid material of pipes and window frames.

Which oil refinery process breaks large hydrocarbon molecules into the small ones used as raw materials for plastics?

Cracking was patented in an early form in 1891 by the Russian engineer Vladimir Shukhov. The steam version now supplies the light gases that chemical plants link into long chains.

Which term describes plastics such as epoxy that harden for good and break down, not melt, when reheated?

Thermosets owe their permanence to chains that are closely cross-linked to one another, so they can take a shape only once. Most everyday plastics can be melted and remoulded.

Polylactic acid, the most widely used filament in 3D printing, is a bioplastic usually made from which crop's starch?

Corn starch is fermented to make the lactic acid that is then linked into chains. The result composts only under the right conditions, and elsewhere it can last for hundreds of years.

In 1941 Henry Ford showed off a prototype car whose plastic body panels were made partly from which crop?

Soybeans went into fourteen plastic panels on a steel frame, which cut the car's weight by about a quarter. The experiment was partly a hedge against wartime steel rationing.

Which plastic, made by accident in an ICI laboratory in 1933, went on to become the most produced in the world?

Polyethylene insulated radar cables so well that Britain made it a wartime secret and suspended sales. Two ICI chemists, Eric Fawcett and Reginald Gibson, had stumbled on it at Northwich.

Which building block of hard, clear plastics has been banned from baby bottles in Canada, the US and the EU?

BPA mimics the hormone oestrogen, and a British biochemist tested it as an artificial oestrogen in the early 1930s. Infants were judged to be most at risk, which is why bottles came first.

Which flammable early plastic was the only base for movie film until the 1950s and long made table tennis balls?

Celluloid is made by mixing nitrocellulose with camphor, which is why it burns so readily. Film studios gave it up when acetate safety film arrived.

Which English inventor showed the first man-made plastic, named after himself, at an 1862 London exhibition?

Alexander Parkes set up a company in 1866 to turn out his Parkesine cheaply and in bulk, but it failed because the material was costly to make and highly flammable.

Which German chemist won the 1953 Nobel Prize for showing that plastics and rubber are made of giant chain molecules?

Hermann Staudinger argued in a 1920 paper that such materials are long chains, when leading chemists thought they were small molecules clumped together. He founded the field's first journal in 1940.

Before vinyl took over, gramophone records were pressed from which natural resin secreted by an insect?

Shellac is secreted by the female lac bug on trees in India and Thailand, and it can take 50,000 or more of the insects to yield a single kilogram.

Which natural latex from Malayan trees insulated the first transatlantic telegraph cable and filled early golf balls?

Gutta-percha softens in hot water and sets hard without turning brittle, and it barely conducts electricity. Demand for cables grew so great that harvesting became unsustainable and the supply collapsed.

Which household product was stumbled on in 1942 by scientists seeking a clear plastic for wartime gun sights?

Super glue was rejected at the time because it stuck to everything it touched. Harry Coover, who led the team, rediscovered it at Eastman Kodak in 1951, and it went on sale in 1958.

Which company became the first major issuer of plastic charge cards in 1959, a year after launching in paper?

American Express had handed out 250,000 paper cards before its official launch day in October 1958, and it replaced them with embossed plastic the following year.

The DuPont engineer who patented the plastic fizzy-drink bottle in 1973 was the brother of which American painter?

Andrew Wyeth was so well known that his brother Nathaniel called himself the other Wyeth. Nathaniel began in 1967 by testing a detergent bottle, which could not take the pressure.

The one-piece plastic shopping bag was patented worldwide in 1965 by a packaging company based in which country?

Sweden was home to the engineer Sten Gustaf Thulin, who formed the bag by folding, welding and die-cutting a flat tube of plastic for the firm Celloplast of Norrköping.

Caterpillars of which insect, widely sold as fishing bait, were shown in 2017 to break down a common plastic?

Wax moth caterpillars carry enzymes in their saliva that can attack the plastic within hours at room temperature. Researchers are investigating whether those enzymes could deal with plastic waste.

Which toymaker began in a carpenter's workshop in 1932 and started making plastic toys in 1947?

Lego took the idea for its bricks from a sample of British self-locking blocks, sent by the supplier of its first moulding machine. A fire in the woodworking shop later ended its wooden toys.

Which plastic lawn ornament, designed by Don Featherstone in 1957, became the official bird of Madison, Wisconsin?

Pink flamingo number one was named Diego by its designer, who won the Ig Nobel Prize for Art in 1996 for the creation. Madison's council made the honour official in 2009.

Which artificial grass, first sold as ChemGrass, was rebranded after being laid in a Houston stadium in 1966?

AstroTurf was invented at Monsanto as a short-pile synthetic turf, and an employee renamed it after its first well-publicised use at the Houston Astrodome.

A container of 28,800 plastic bath toys lost in the Pacific in 1992 helped oceanographers to map what?

Ocean currents carried the first ten toys about 2,000 miles to a beach near Sitka, Alaska, within ten months. Beachcombers went on to report hundreds more ducks, beavers and frogs.

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the largest build-up of ocean plastic, lies halfway between Hawaii and which US state?

California lies to the east of the patch, which is no floating island. Most of it is small particles suspended at or just below the surface, which satellites cannot pick out.

Which seabirds nest on Midway Atoll in their hundreds of thousands, nearly all of them with plastic in their stomachs?

Albatrosses swallow floating plastic at sea, apparently mistaking it for food. Their chicks cannot cough the pieces back up, because they do not develop the reflex until they are four months old.

Explorer Victor Vescovo reported finding a plastic bag and sweet wrappers in 2019 at the bottom of which ocean trench?

In the Mariana Trench, every one of the small crustaceans called amphipods that researchers examined had at least one piece of synthetic material in its stomach.

Which nickname is given to the tiny pre-production plastic pellets that often spill into the sea during shipping?

Nurdles are often mistaken for food by seabirds and fish, and about 230,000 tonnes of them are thought to end up in the oceans every year.

Which uninhabited South Pacific island was found in 2017 to have the densest plastic litter recorded anywhere?

Henderson Island had an estimated 37.7 million pieces of debris on its beaches, swept in by the South Pacific Gyre. Its purple hermit crabs make their homes in washed-up plastic containers.

Which item, the most littered man-made waste in the world, usually contains fibres of the plastic cellulose acetate?

Cigarette butts become litter at an estimated rate of 4.5 trillion a year. Their filters break down only gradually, passing through a stage as microplastics on the way.