Plastic’s Stellar Story

The Story of a Planet & it’s Plastic

Radiolarians, a type of plankton found in the oceans of the Precambrian and the precusor of our planet’s plastic today. Art by Ernst Haekel (Kunstformen der Natur, 1904). This is the third installment of a series laying out a new ethical theory of green. This week we go far back to the primordial Earth origins of plastic — and lay out the groundwork for the theory.

OVER 5 BILLION YEARS AGO, IN A SWIRL OF INTERSTELLAR DUST our solar system came together. As cosmic matter collided and coalesced, growing ever denser, our sun ignited. Assimilating the remaining debris, clumps of matter and momentum began to form, falling into orbit around our young star. On one such proto-planet, a particular pattern began to unfold — and the…