Plastic Planet

“Everybody’s plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic",<br/> Andy Warhol

The United States throws out 25 billion plastic water bottles each year; a ‘patch’ of plastic garbage twice the size of Texas now swirls in the center of the Pacific Ocean. From its invention in 1907, plastic and plastic-derived chemicals have worked their way into the rungs of every food chain on Earth. Plastic might be the newest nutrient in the planet’s ecosystems, but so far, nature has yet to find a use for it. The only sensible way to think of plastic is as a raw Next Nature material, waiting for its balancing counterpart to evolve. We only have time: the average plastic bag will linger for your great grandchildren to clean up 1,000 years from now.

Staff Picks

Sexy Car - How did that ever happen?

A hunt for hightech

‘There is no longer such a thing as a pristine sandy beach. The ones that look pristine are usually groomed, and if you look closely, you will always find plastic particles that have been washed up by the tides’

The Soul is a Plastic Bag

In this stunning short by Ramin Bahrani, the title character spends a lifetime (or more) on a quest for a creator not even aware of his existence.

Suffering from Anthropomorphobia?

2009-11-04

Anthropomorphobia is the fear of acknowledging qualities we wish to consider only human in non-human things. Sufferers from the condition...