Plastic

The Anthropocene Project. An Encyclopedia

Once, the human being pounded clay into bricks and built houses, step by step refining it to create all kinds of useful things around the house and garden with increasing adroitness. Some even see humankind as formed from clay, brought to life by divine breath. Bound to the earth, subject to greater powers. Let us fast forward a few thousand years and look around: plastic has taken the place of clay. Plastic, this wonderful material, ingeniously interwoven, bendable, cuttable, malleable, still solid and always light. While clay breaks and, like human beings, decays to dust, plastic has a hard time doing both. Impossible to destroy and mobile at the same time. If there is a god, why didn’t he make us out of plastic?