At the end of a cobbled mews in Notting Hill, west London, in a series of small, dark rooms, you can track the advance of plastic containers into our lives. The Museum of Brands, a collection of pill bottles, chocolate wrappers and other artefacts of consumption, is sandwiched between a packaging design company and a smart dressmaker. In its low-lit displays, plastic emerges in the late 1950s and steadily encompasses more and more of the things we buy, consume and throw away. The first piece of plastic packaging appears just after a cabinet devoted to the Coronation: a pink bottle of Outdoor Girl talcum powder. The odd tub of detergent then presents itself before the 1960s deliver up Britain’s supermarket diet: Coco Pops (1960), Spaghetti Hoops (1966) and Smash Instant Potato (1968). From the introduction of “Ski with real fruit” yoghurt in 1963, plastic spreads in all directions to its current eminence as the wrapping of choice for more than half the packaged goods in the UK. By the time the visitor reaches the present day – a bright archway of rainforest berry drinks, Asda probiotics and Nivea cell-renewal creams – it’s so ubiquitous you barely notice it. What else could two litres of Diet Coke with lime possibly come in?
Close up, plastic packaging can be a marvellous thing. Those who make a living from it call it a forgotten infrastructure that allows modern urban life to exist. Plastic film, bottles, trays and pallets have helped society defy natural limits such as the seasons, the rotting of food and the distance most of us live from the fields and factories where our dinners, drink and drugs are produced. Evolved under the pressure of ever-rising oil prices, transportation costs and technology that allows goods to stay fresher for longer, plastic packaging is now absurdly sophisticated compared with the objects it contains. Temperature control for mushrooms; laser-drilled holes for salad bags; seven alternating layers of film inside a carton of UHT milk ... all this from just 2 per cent of the world’s oil production.
