Tedium Highlight in Plastic: How shrink-wrap was helped along by the frozen turkey. 

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Tag results: Plastic

Turn Off The Pillow Machines

Amazon’s plans to shift its packaging strategy points at a new front in the lengthy tug of war between paper and plastic—a war that started in grocery stores.

Color Is The Enemy

If you enjoyed our last issue about plastic, you’ll love this one, which suggests that colorful plastic could be a potential long-term health hazard.

Macroplastics

Discussing the invention of HDPE, one of the best plastics around, and how it evolved from Hula Hoops to milk crates to plastic lumber.

Fake Festive Vs. Real Thing

The tale of the modern Christmas tree is a concept that constantly passes through a tale of sustainability, whether the tree is real or fake.

The Cover-Up

How screen protectors became a part of our lives, and the weird reason some early cathode ray tubes needed them.

Braids of Nylon, Everywhere

How braided nylon became such a hip part of our charging cables. Long story short: people like it when their cables feel like rope!

Wrapped Up

Discussing the radiant techniques required to shrink-wrap an object before you buy it. You can thank frozen turkeys for making it possible.

Tangential Juice Innovation

The story of how we got the juice box is really the story of how we got a lot of other things first. And those things look like rabbit holes.

Plastic Pail Perfection

Why McDonald’s is missing a major marketing opportunity by not handing out its ’80s era plastic pumpkin buckets to modern kids. (I feel strongly about this.)

Blister In The Store

Why plastic blister packs and clamshell packs, despite the near-universal frustration they create among consumers, have become a truism of consumer goods.

Pure Polycarbonate

Nintendo copied Apple, while Apple copied Braun. Why are there so many electronics made of white polycarbonate, no matter the decade?

Still Grasping At Straws

Businesses and cities are ditching the plastic straw, the ultimate commodity object. But the shift is controversial, and alternatives don’t come cheap.

A Screwy Straw Stat

A curious estimate seen in a wide variety of stories about plastic straws was uncovered by a 9-year-old. How big of a problem is that?

Ban The Box

The defining debate of the early compact disc era centered around the longbox, a wasteful form of packaging pushed by retailers and paper manufacturers.

Cloth, Meet Plastic

A YouTuber uncovers a genuinely novel use for 3D printing: a method for making snazzy-looking T-shirts. The hard part? Passing the washing machine test.

Bend, Don’t Break

When new innovations in rubber and plastic hit during the 19th and 20th centuries, hair combs usually had them first—especially in unbreakable form.

It’s Not Styrofoam

Once seen as an incredibly innovative, lightweight material, expanded polystyrene foam is now just a big problem—in part because it’s so hard to recycle.

Lemony Fresh

Lemon juice has long come in containers shaped like lemons. In the U.K., the containers hold an important legacy—both with pancakes and the legal system.

Genuine Imitation Leather

It looks like the real thing, but pleather is fake and plastic. Whether or not that bothers you is based on your opinion of leather, probably.
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