Plastics after Oil
by Anika Behrndt, Isabel Hoyos & Gernot Wagner
When Belgian-American chemist Leo Baekeland invented the first commercial synthetic plastic, Bakelite, in 1907, he started a materials revolution. Innovative and ultra-durable, this fossil fuel derivative quickly became foundational to early electrical and industrial manufacturing. But not long after, product design and packaging systems started increasingly prioritizing disposability and convenience, and plastics began dominating the materials market not based on durability, but on cost and throughput.
From 1950 to 2025, global plastic production multiplied from ~1.5 million to ~450 million metric tons—one of the fastest material expansions in industrial history. It’s become embedded across nearly every sector of the global economy, underpinning food systems, healthcare, mobility, and manufacturing. And the low cost of plastic has entrenched its use even in applications with limited functional necessity, like disposable cutlery, individually wrapped produce, and redundant packaging.
Structural lock-ins ensure continuous demand for virgin fossil feedstocks, while waste management costs are externalized from the petrochemicals industry onto municipalities and consumers.
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