“Plastic: A Toxic Love Story’’
by Susan Freinkel (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
“A century into mankind’s love affair with plastic,’’ writes Susan Freinkel, in “Plastic: A Toxic Love Story,’’ “we’re starting to recognize this is not a healthy relationship.’’ This eloquent, elegant book 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. The author sketches the history of a series of plastic products, along the way inviting readers to think about consumerism, luxury, design, waste. People once saved and reused disposable Styrofoam coffee cups, for instance; they had to be taught to throw them away. It’s a lesson we learned too well, Freinkel argues in this highly readable, truly important book. She doesn’t merely condemn plastic but rather seeks to understand it, pondering the ambiguous inheritance of a material that “can rightly inspire both our deepest admiration and our strongest disgust.’’
