In 1951, two Phillips Petroleum chemists discovered plastics that later found uses in everyday products; US production reached 136 billion pounds in 2025

It's 1951 in a nondescript laboratory in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. Chemist Robert Banks and his colleague Paul Hogan are trying to extract more octane from petroleum than their predecessors did. Instead, a flask of propylene gas has mysteriously transformed into a white, toffee-like consistency. The National Inventors Hall of Fame credits the pair with inventing crystalline polypropylene and a breakthrough low-pressure process for high-density polyethylene (HDPE) — substances that revolutionized the plastics industry because they were stronger and more heat-resistant than existing materials.

An underwhelming discovery that took decades to pay off

A discovery of this magnitude is rarely celebrated immediately after it is made, as the case of Banks and Hogan illustrates. Their plastics initially had little commercial success as manufacturers clung to their existing supplies of other materials. However, that changed in 1956 when America's love for the Hula-Hoop saw toy manufacturers scrambling to secure large and cheap stocks of plastic. Marlex, the trademark of Phillips for the plastic obtained by Hogan and Banks, was quick to fill the need. This was soon followed by hospitals adopting HDPE (high-density polyethylene) baby bottles, as they were resistant to the high temperatures of sterilization.

As far as delayed discoveries go, the story has a bright ending. In 1987, thirty-one years after Marlex went viral, Banks and Hogan received the Perkin Medal, one of America's most prestigious chemistry awards. According to a 1987 study titled “Discoverers of Polypropylene Share Prize,” published in the Chemical and Engineering News Archive, the official journal of the American Chemical Society, they had, in the meantime, managed to create another material, within the same year: the first commercial low-pressure production technology for HDPE plastic. The two chemists had made two breakthrough discoveries in materials science, separated by only a few weeks, with little fanfare.

From a nondescript flask to 136 billion pounds of polymers

HDPE has found its way into the lives of hundreds, if not thousands, of average modern Americans: from milk jugs and detergent packaging to slide parks and artificial grass. Its close cousin, polypropylene, is used in packaging, medical devices, carpets, and car bumpers. Statista’s aggregate of American Chemistry Council's plastics data reports that in 2025, US plastics production exceeded 136.1 billion pounds. Such a scale of production would have been hard to imagine in 1951 when Hogan and Banks made their accidental discovery in Bartlesville. However, the downside to the scale of adoption of polymers was a steep learning curve about the consequences of plastic waste.

The part of the story you ought to know

The magic of plastic is that it can be molded, reshaped, and formed into almost any shape with relative ease. However, the same properties make plastic difficult to recycle and eliminate. Microplastics now turn up in oceans, drinking water, and, according to a 2025 study titled “Bioaccumulation of microplastics in decedent human brains,” published in the journal Nature Medicine, microplastics are found even inside the human brain. The study analyzed post-mortem brain, liver, and kidney tissue from samples collected in 2016 and 2024, finding brain concentrations roughly seven to ten times higher than in the liver or kidney, and levels in the 2024 brain samples significantly higher than those from 2016.

Meanwhile, a 2024 Association of Plastic Recyclers study (its data dashboard was published in 2026) found that at least 5.1 billion pounds of post-consumer plastic were recovered for recycling in the U.S. in 2024. Clearly, the current rate of recycling is far from keeping up with the demand for polymers. The long list of applications can barely be enumerated, from the cheap and durable packaging to the medical devices saving millions of lives annually.

Plastics made life better in ways that pleased more than just the oil companies' shareholders. But perhaps we need to start asking not only who made the plastics that made the modern world possible, but also whether we are ready to invest as much effort and time into studying the consequences of these materials. After all, most of the plastics made today will likely persist long after their creators and modifiers are gone.