The use and misuse of plastics in design have been the bedrock of turbulent relationships between consumers, manufacturers, and the material family. It has been acknowledged that culturally we, in the West, have had a deep, long-lived, yet ambivalent relationship with plastics as the materials have been seen as both a bringer of utopian ideals as well as a cheap alternative to nobler natural materials. Today, those relational connections have become diametric with individuals loving plastics because of what they can be made into, and those who hate them for the very same reason. This chapter will explore the historical comprehension of designed objects made of plastics, based on the notions of identity and authenticity, the acceptance of new materials, the ideas of cultural perception and taste, and the general understanding, or lack thereof, of manufacturing processes.

The Routledge Handbook of Archaeology and Plastics

Understanding the Use of Plastics in Design: Materials, Manufacturing Processes, and Relational Connections

The appreciation or reception of materials can create a positive or a negative reaction in the user and an individual’s understanding of materials comes from their own experiential knowledge, influence of others, and cultural perception.  The condemnation of the overuse of plastics materials and their impact on the environment when they become waste has, understandably, meant that today the cultural perception of plastics is largely that they are cheap, rubbish, throw away - all bad news.   This position of negativity has been reached because we currently see the mismanagement of plastics waste as it blows about in the wind; we see it as rubbish in our streets, and as detritus in the oceans.  However, our relationships with the material family, over the time they have existed, have had a varied and turbulent history with different perspectives generated by different people at different times.  This article will briefly explore ‘a’, rather than ‘the’, history of the use of plastics with the aim of putting the current societal relationship with them into context.

A brief history of the use of plastics

In order to understand the relationships individuals have with plastics today, it is useful to understand how people related to those materials in the past.  After the restrictions of the Second World War with rationing touching many aspects of consumption, society of the 1950s was encouraged to consume products to aid economic growth, to maintain jobs, and improve lifestyles (Hine, 2010).  Disposability and the notion of using something once and then throwing it away grew to become a sign of wealth and cleanliness, consumers were encouraged to use disposable products for their efficiency and to avoid contamination.  The ideas of purification and convenience encouraged the development of ethical justifications for the use of disposable items (Hawkins, 2006). The link between cleanliness and single-use packaging is strengthened by the act of throwing away the wrapper (Lucas, 2002); the ecological consequences were not, at that time, contemplated (Fiell and Fiell, 2009).  The popular understanding that plastics are low value and therefore disposable has been built up over a history of misuse of long-lived materials for short-lived products.   This paper will explore the value placed on plastics through and exploration of their uses and misuses, their consumption and significantly their conspicuous non-consumption, and how we deal with them at the end of their useful life.

Plastics, Environment, Culture and the Politics of Waste

References
Fiell, C., Fiell, P., 2009. Plastic Dreams: Synthetic Visions in Design. Fiell Publishing, London.
Hawkins, G., 2006. The Ethics of Waste: How we Relate to Rubbish. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto & Oxford.
Hine, T., 2010. Populuxe, in: Lees-Maffei, G., Houze, R. (Eds.), The Design History Reader. Berg, Oxford & New York, pp. 152–157.
Lucas, G., 2002. Disposability and Dispossession in the Twentieth century. J. Mater. Cult. 7, 5–22.

Plastics: What are they good for?

This thesis, A Matter of Material: Exploring the Value of the Museum of Design in Plastics (MoDiP), sets out to understand how a museum focusing on a single material family can contribute to the societal and museological comprehension of design in plastics. It looks at how museums communicate a group of materials that audiences believe they know and understand, yet that knowledge and understanding may not be the whole story. It explores why it might seem strange that a museum dedicated to plastics even exists, by looking at what museums are, what they have been traditionally, and what they can become.
The contribution to knowledge that this research demonstrates is in the previously unwritten history and close study of MoDiP which is an, as yet, under researched resource. My role as Curator of MoDiP has provided an empirical knowledge and expertise that grounds this contribution in my professional practice. This has enabled an opening of a knowledge embedded in the role of a museum of a contested and devalued material, illuminating the problem of plastics in museums. The study inserts plastics, and the specific collection of them by MoDiP, into the relational museological theory to discover the value of the museum’s practice where complexity is added to the debate about plastics in the current climate. The particular interest of the triangular relationships between audiences, museums, and plastics is demonstrated using new diagrams, a tradition of museum studies especially used by Susan Pearce. The six original diagrams within the thesis are used to illustrate new ideas and concepts.
This research uses the tools of case study as a methodology to make a close study of the functions and collections of MoDiP, and in contrast the Pinto Collection of wooden objects at Birmingham Museums Trust. These tools include interviewing employees, studying documents, and observing practices, and sit alongside the curatorial practices of collections and object research, audience sampling through surveys and social media, as well as visiting other museums and exhibitions and reflecting on such experiences. By using these methods, this work investigates the material qualities of plastics, alongside other materials, and looks at why the placement of some materials within the museum setting might be difficult to comprehend and how, by being the sole focus of the museum, materials can be more deeply explored.

Dr Louise Dennis

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