“Plastic: A Toxic Love Story” helped kick off what is now a world-wide discussion over the place of plastic in our lives. When Freinkel began researching the book, she decided to try to spend a day not touching anything plastic. The folly of that plan became apparent moments after waking up when she stumbled in the bathroom and confronted a plastic toilet seat, a plastic toothbrush, a plastic tube of toothpaste. That simple thought experiment was a wake-up call to the ubiquity of plastic.

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It's no overstatement to say plastic built the modern world. Where would we be without pacemakers, polyester, computers, cellphones, sneakers or chewing gum. (Plastic in gum? Yep!)

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But a century into our love affair with plastic, we’re starting to realize it’s not such a healthy one.  Plastics draw on dwindling fossil fuels, leach harmful chemicals, litter landscapes, and destroy marine life. Microscopic bits of plastic are now to be found everywhere, from the depth of the ocean to miles high in the sky, and every part of our bodies.  And yet, we keep using and consuming more and more.

 

We’re trapped in an unhealthy dependence – a toxic relationship. Freinkel treks through history, science, popular culture and the global economy to trace the arc of that relationship. She tells her story through eight familiar plastic objects: the comb, chair, Frisbee, IV bag, disposable lighter, grocery bag, soda bottle, and credit card. Each one illuminates a different facet of our synthetic world, and together they give us a new way of thinking about a substance that has become the defining medium—and metaphor—of our age.

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Reviews

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"This is an important book, a thorough dissection of the complexities that today's plastic world presents. More than that, it's flat-out fascinating, each chapter more compelling than the last."
–Philadelphia Inquirer

 

Freinkel “thoughtfully plumbs the cascading, unintended consequences of our dependence on plastics, from the way obesity followed ballooning cola bottles to a new and now permanent culture of disposable material goods. …a highly readable, truly important book.

-Boston Globe

 

"Susan Freinkel had me from the minute I finished reading about her attempt to try to live without plastic for a week...Ms. Freinkel has penned a fascinating—and at times extremely disturbing—book about material that has literally invaded and, as her research reveals, infected every aspect of modern life."
 –New York Journal of Books

 

"It's impossible to read her book without developing an appreciation for and a concern about the role that plastic plays in our lives."
 –The Columbus Dispatch

 

When you write about something so ubiquitous as plastic, you must be prepared to write in several modes, and Freinkel rises to this task: Sometimes "Plastic" is a work of cultural history; sometimes, a work of business reporting; sometimes, an environmentalist screed. Where Freinkel is perhaps most at home is as a science writer. She manages to render the most dull chemical reaction into vigorous, breathless sentences

-San Francisco Chronicle

 

Plastic is everywhere and Susan Freinkel explains why. Plastic: A Toxic Love Story is gracefully written and deeply informative.”
-Elizabeth Kolbert, author of “The Sixth Extinction”

 

Susan Freinkel’s page-turner brings together history, science, and culture to help us understand the plastic world that we have wrought and that has become part of us.”

-Raj Patel, author of “The Value of Nothing”