dk nkf - Nordisk Konservatorforbund Danmark

Plastic - has the dream material of the 20 th
century become the nightmare of the 21 st ?
Plastic - the dream material
The world’s annual consumption of plastic materials
increased from around 5 million tonnes in the 1950s
to nearly 100 million tonnes in the year 2000. In 1982,
plastics production surpassed that of steel worldwide
and that year was heralded as the start of the Plastic
Age [1]. Increase in the number of processing and
fabrication techniques has allowed modern plastics
to be manipulated in thin film, bulk and foam forms,
and to be combined and reinforced with fibres,
metals, wood and other materials. Different plastics
types can also be laminated together using heat.
Today there are approximately 50 different basic
types of plastics included in 60,000 formulations.
Packaging is the biggest market sector for plastics
[2]. Polyethylene and poly (vinyl chloride) are the
most highly consumed of all plastics worldwide.
Synthetic plastics have had a significant influence on
industrial, domestic and cultural aspects of everyday
life in the 20 th and 21 st centuries. Their significance
is reflected in the prophecy by artists Marcel Biefer
and Beat Zgraggen in 1991 which states that ‘plastic
artefacts will be the most important witnesses to our
time’[3].
Plastics represent advances in technology, illustrated
by the dramatic growth in number and type of
information storage media available since the 1970s,
credit and payment cards and food containers which
can be taken directly from freezer to microwave oven
to dinner table without damage. Before the 1940s, it
was not possible to drink hot coffee from a plastic
cup without it softening and becoming too hot to hold
- an activity which is commonplace today.
Plastics have largely replaced natural materials.
Restrictions on imported rubber latex, wool, silk and
other natural materials to Europe during World War 2
stimulated the development of synthetic alternatives.
Keynote speech
yvonne shashoua
Between 1935 and 1945, many new polymers were
introduced including polyethylene, polyamides, poly
(methyl methacrylate), polyurethanes, poly (vinyl
chloride), silicones, epoxies, polytetrafluoroethylene
and polystyrene. Polyethylene was incorporated into
radar systems while poly (vinyl chloride) replaced the
limited stocks of natural rubber as cable insulation.
Plastics have become commercially valuable. Prices
of contemporary art, designs in plastic, jewellery
and plastic models associated with movie films
have increased dramatically since the mid 1980s.
At auction in February 2007, Naum Gabo´s `Linear
Construction in Space No.3´ was sold for a record
£1,252,000 [4]. Previous sales of Gabo´s work had
realised a maximum £350,500. In September 2006,
a Barbie doll manufactured in 1955, ´Barbie in
midnight red´, was auctioned for £9,000 and is the
most expensive doll sold at auction.
Today, almost all international museums and galleries
possess collections which contain plastics either
as objects in their own right or as components of
composite objects (Table 1). The majority of private
collections are devoted exclusively to particular
plastics such as Bakelite, or contain a significant
proportion of plastics (e.g. button, toy and radio
collections) whereas in museum collections, plastics
are more widely distributed and include components
in addition to whole objects of plastic[5].
Degradation - the bubble bursts
Until the late 1970s, plastics were widely believed
to be dream materials and to last forever, a belief
fuelled by the plastics industry. The first publication
concerning degradation of a commercial polymer
appeared in 1861 in the Journal of the Chemical
Society [6]. It concerned the failure of gutta percha
cable insulation used to construct the East Indian
telegraphs which deteriorated immediately after
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