Happy Birthday Plastic Bag: Rot in Peace

When it comes to birthday’s many of us do not like celebrating the passing of time. Whether your 75 or 25, I don’t think there is a lot of joy once you get past 18 or 21. But this particular 75^th birthday is anything but a celebration.

In reality, I say, rot in hell plastic bag! I wish you’d never been born!

It’s a few days behind us now, but I was so enraged at the time I couldn’t bring myself to write about it (not really, I was on holiday). But, discovered by accident, polyethylene is the base of what now populates much of today’s landfills in the form of plastic bags.

The first industrially practical polyethylene synthesis was discovered (again by accident) in 1933 by Eric Fawcett and Reginald Gibson at the ICI works in Northwich, England. The accident resulted in the waxy material that, over time, has been “improved” so that barely a day goes by without us encountering a dozen or so examples of this product.

The rest of the story is history and, sadly, our future. Heaven help human ingenuity.

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