Since 1950, humans have produced about 8.3 billion metric tons of plastic, and at least 90 per cent is still in existence. It has leaked into the natural environment massively, and yet we continue to produce it at an ever-increasing rate. Plastic materials have become an intrinsic part of our ecology and environment. Over geological time, they may be subjected to the same heat and pressure that form rocks and minerals. Future geologists may identify the remains of plastic bottles as fossils even if the plastic itself has degraded or been replaced by other materials.
I wonder what future civilisations will understand from ours when they dig through the plastic layers of Earth?
I imagined these objects made from plastic waste to raise awareness about the matter and speculate on how plastic materials blur the boundary between the natural and the artificial, acting as the binder of new types of conglomerates.
So, more than a substance, plastic is the very idea of its infinite transformation; as its everyday name indicates, it is ubiquity made visible. – R. Barthes, Mythologies, le plastique (1957)
