The Unsustainable Eternity of Plastics

In an entertaining look at the history of plastic, Michele Masneri[i] wrapped up the story nicely when he wrote that Italy’s post-war economic miracle and national renaissance “came delightfully packaged in plastic.”
And it was true. Innovative and long-lasting—too long-lasting, as it would turn out—without plastics, the post-war economic boom would not have been the same. Admittedly, it was a slow and unassuming start. Plastic initially struggled to compete with the ductility and laminability of wood (whose processing, however, was more costly as it was not as easy to automate) and its use was uncreative, to say the least. But the golden age of plastic was just around the corner, ready to shape the fortunes of a great many industries.
No success story would be such without a breakthrough. For plastic, the breakthrough came in 1954, when Giulio Natta’s work on polymer synthesis led to the invention of isotactic polypropylene. Ten years later, in 1963, Moplen, as it was branded by Montecatini, would earn the chemical engineer the Nobel Prize for Chemistry, jointly with Karl Ziegler. In the meantime, the new polymer was making headway in Milan’s manufacturing world, finding versatile application in homewares, toys, seals, food containers, and much more, after Montecatini, the patent-holder, showcased Moplen in a world premiere at the 1957 Milan Fair.
It was a revolution in the world of thermoplastics. Mechanically resistant and cheap to produce and mould, Moplen shot to fame as the leading brand in plastics manufacturing, becoming a symbol of the economic miracle.
Moplen’s industrial success was underpinned by its unmatched properties and quality, but it would soon become a household name across Italy, thanks to catchy advertising campaigns featuring comedian Gino Bramieri on the television show Carosello and the refrain,

“E Mo’, e Mo’, e Mo’… Moplen!” [And now for… Moplen!]
but also,
“Madam, be sure to check again that it’s made of Moplen!”

The country was moving onwards and upwards, and so was the fair. In 1964, the curtains were raised on Plast, a new trade fair specialised in plastics, and Mucef, showcasing homewares and hardware. The shows marked a new milestone along a road begun in 1946 with the reopening of the Milan Fair, in what was a great symbolic moment for a hard-working and constructive city, eager to leave behind the past and pursue the miracle that was becoming reality. A road that was winding its way to the gates of a new age of consumption, which a decade later would become mass consumption, in an era crowned by plastics.
The boom years brought prosperity in every sense. As the country’s gross domestic product expanded, consumption levels rose and with them, education levels, health spending, public and private transport, and the quality of food and nutrition.
As a country lacking in raw materials, Italy turned to manufacturing, specialising in finished and intermediate goods. As the mentality soon shifted from totalitarian planning to a market economy, Italian manufacturing flourished, driven by a new approach to business built on a unique mix of creativity, courage, vision, and innovation. Under the banner “Made in Italy,” sectors such as fashion, architecture, industrial design, and precision mechanics reached levels of excellence that were the envy of the world.

[i] M. Masneri, “The Creation of Plastic” in Il Foglio, 11th November 2019

The Milan Fair was a showcase that helped propel all that was Made in Italy to new heights, with pavilions packed with innovation and awestruck crowds.
Cultural and social trends, new architectural styles, industrial developments, even literary trends and the changing face of cities all came to bear on the fair, and were in turn shaped by it.
The Milan Fair mirrored the transformations sweeping Italy and opening the country to the world, bringing to light the connections between industry, trade, and society.

A dimension captured eloquently by Aldo Nove:
“It is hard to put into words what the Milan Fair was thirty years ago. The biggest trade centre in the world.
A world where every kind of store was summed up in a space where, walking by, you saw things and discovered they existed, and the void and the cosmos became filled with colours and exotic domestic appliances, unknown foods and futuristic machines, the prodigious fortunes of Moplen. A three-dimensional carousel of advertisements. A paradise of goods.
The Nations Pavilion was a miniature Earth, where every stand was a country and the escalators took you from one continent to another, all within Milan.” [i]

What was happening at the fairgrounds was a metaphor for the industrial transformation of the country.
While the first steps from large-scale manufacturing to modern global supply chains were anything but smooth, what was initially written off as “delocalization” soon showed all its true transformational potential—as seen in the virtuous relationship between the furniture industry and product design. A symbol of this perfect match was the first Milan Furniture Fair in 1961, in what was a celebration of product design at its best, built on a thriving partnership between industry and the creative talent of a booming Milan.

Italy was changing pace, no longer racing, but striding forward towards a future full of optimism. Milan was the “city of all Italian cities,” an industrial driver that was increasingly becoming a capital of design, fashion, music, and fine food.

[i] A. Nove, Nove 2004, Milano non è Milano, Laterza, Rome-Bari 2004, p.20

Within the space of two decades, plastic became the material of the moment.
Major manufacturers such as Cassina, Danese, Alessi, and others increasingly chose to pair their names with leading masters of product design, from Gio Ponti to Angelo Magiarotti, Enzo Mari to Bruno Munari, Gae Aulenti to Ettore Sottsass, Marco Zanuso to Richard Sapper.

An entire industrial and intellectual machine put its wheels into motion at the service of ordinary objects, redesigning our daily life.
As new needs and desires emerged across the country, industry promptly responded to the call, seizing on the opportunities unlocked by technological progress.
Creativity was in the air, and designers took to new materials. What emerged was not just new objects, but new ways of using them.

These were the golden years for companies like Kartell, based in Noviglio, a manufacturer of iconic furniture and design objects made of plastic. Thanks to the work of its founder, chemical engineer Giulio Castelli, and his architect-wife, Anna Castelli Ferrieri, Kartell raised the creation of plastic furniture to new heights.
They were the years of innovation in lighting, experimental seating design, and iconic utensils (to name just two, the Sacco armchair by Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini, and Franco Teodoro for Zanotta, 1968, and the Pratone/Big Meadow seating object by Giorgio Ceretti, Pietro Derossi e Riccardo Rosso for Gufram, 1971).
They were also the years of leading designers at the Milan Fair, such as Pier Giacomo Castiglioni, who with his brother, Achille, designed pavilions for RAI and Montecatini, and the launch of international awards, such as the Compasso d’Oro, the world’s most prestigious product design award.

Even highlights have their shadows, and there is always a price to be paid for success. Plastic is no exception. Half a century on from its rise to domination, the world is now grappling with the tricky question of the life cycle of plastic objects—increasingly disposable and yet long-lasting. Blaming the material itself, however, is unfair. Rather, the focus needs to shift on addressing distortions in the market and, in short, correcting the price of plastic to take into account the cost of its disposal and treatment—a cost of little impact on us in the present, but which weighs heavily on future generations.
When something is said to be forever, we need to think long and hard about that.