To respond to the plastics crisis, we may find just as many answers looking backward as we do forward. At a recent event, sociologist Dr. Rebecca Altman explains. To respond to the plastics crisis, we ...

Trace the history of the invention of plastic, and how the material ushered in what became known as the plastics century. For centuries, billiard balls were made of ivory from elephant tusks. But when ...

As recently as the 1960s, perhaps later—within the life span of Tom Hanks, and within a few years of when the world was using its very first ATMs and contraceptive pills—nearly all of the planet’s sea ...

Nest researcher Auke-Florian Hiemstra stumbled upon a bird nest that appeared to go back 30 years in time – filled with historical plastics. His discovery of successive layers of plastic in birds’ ...

Try to go an hour without touching something plastic. Come on, I dare you. The stuff is everywhere. Think about it. Everything from your toilet seat to the electronic devices you constantly use ...

Every year, 400 million tons of plastic are produced worldwide, and every year, approximately 57 million tons of plastic pollution is created. And yet in November, the latest round of negotiations on ...

WUHAN, CHINA - OCTOBER 29: (CHINA OUT) A worker sorts used plastic bottles at a plastics recycling mill which is ceasing production as the global financial crisis starts to bite in China's recycling ...

There's Bandera, Biesenberger and Brandenberger. There's Eichengrün, Gerber and Haag. And there's Kanagawa and Sammet. Luigi Bandera, founder of Costruzioni Meccaniche Luigi Bandera SpA, Italy, and a ...

In 1863, when much of the United States was anguishing over the Civil War, an entrepreneur named Michael Phelan was fretting about billiard balls. At the time, the balls were made of ivory, preferably ...

A plastic bag might be the most overengineered object in history. Some years back, I stopped by a French deli to buy some big chunks of cheese and carried them home in a plastic bag. The cheese was so ...

President Donald Trump is known to drink many Diet Cokes, but one thing you’re not likely to ever see him using again is a paper straw. “We’re going back to plastic straws,” Trump announced after ...