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CHAPTER ONE What Is Peak Plastic? Truth or Consequences? Science fiction stories always seem to have a purpose. Godzilla, the prehistoric sea monster who was awakened and empowered by nuclear radiation, was a metaphor of the impact of nuclear weapons on the Japanese nation, a subject that was still on the minds of its people. Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley in 1831, tells the tale of a creator who has the ability but not the wisdom to re-create life as a lesson for how science during her day was a burgeoning practice of great promise and peril at the same time. Today, I feel as if I must be a science fiction writer telling the story of how the entire planet is being plastic wrapped into submission by the enormous amount of this material that exists on the planet.1 Is this a metaphor? Hardly so. The story of plastic and its great use in our lives, so seemingly harmless but omnipresent, is a matter few are talking about, yet it is one of the greatest paradoxes we are facing in the 21st century. If you think I’m exaggerating, consider that there is no part of the world that is free of plastic waste—not the deepest part of the ocean, the highest peaks, the most remote areas of the vast blue seas, or the farthest point north at the Arctic Circle. And it is in plain sight of where you are sitting right now, blending into your environment with or without notice, sometimes beyond your vision in particles so small your eyes cannot see. You may not think about it much, but the moment you wake up, your day begins with plastic: as soon as you hit the snooze button on your plastic alarm clock, when your feet slip into your plastic slippers and bathrobe (sometimes cotton, sometimes synthetic, often both), when you pop off the plastic cap of your plastic toothpaste holder (and sometimes putting plastic in your mouth in the form of plastic beads in your toothpaste), wash your face with plastic microbeads in your exfoliate wash from its plastic jar, and then slide over the plastic shower curtain before you pick up the plastic