Some years back, I stopped by a French deli to buy some big chunks of cheese and carried them home in a plastic bag. The cheese was so heavy that the bag stretched and bulged, and the handle dug painfully into my hands. But the bag didn’t break. That’s because of the magical chemistry of plastic—essentially, oil turned solid, with carbon and hydrogen atoms that line up in repeating units to form long, noodle-like molecules.
These molecules are pliable and strong, which is what makes plastic so widely useful. And so durable: I unpacked the hunks of Camembert and Havarti and shoved the bag into the back of a kitchen