The Song of Styrene

An Intimate History of Plastics

An intimate history of our fraught relationship with plastic

Plastic. It was the wonder material. Cheap. Versatile. Disposable.

Plastic was the making of the modern world. From Tupperware to typewriter ribbons, phone casings to furniture, it fuelled the West’s post-war ascendancy. And for Rebecca Altman it was the family business. For decades her father worked on polystyrene – as ubiquitous as it is unrecyclable.

Now, a handful of generations later, we live with billions of tonnes of plastic. Most of it will stay with us for centuries, collecting on the tide lines and infiltrating our bodies. Today, there is no nature that isn’t also plastic.

Rebecca Altman follows a polymer chain, tracing the connections between the writer, Holocaust survivor and chemist Primo Levi, her father’s fascination with polystyrene and her own research into plastics and the days she spends combing the beach for fragments. Lyrical and thought-provoking, The Song of Styrene offers a powerful, personal reckoning with our troubled relationship with plastics.

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