Product design in plastic materials: the widespread application of plastics in consumer goods and society

The final quarter of the 20th century witnessed a considerable increase in the application of polymeric materials to an endless array of industrial products. The industry of polymeric materials has shown an impressively vigorous development, coming up with ever more diversified and sophisticated types and families of synthetic materials, each with highly advanced and increasingly more specific attributes, properties, potentialities and functionalities. New possibilities of these polymeric materials led to greater creative freedom for designers, who came to enjoy a large plethora of choices of polymers with which to work to model the plastic material culture at the turn of the 21st century. The environmental impact associated with the production and expandability of consumer products manufactured in plastic, on the other hand, has also accordingly been increasingly addressed. Despite the unquestionable advantages for society (particularly for users’ daily tasks), attention has shifted to the somewhat unforeseeable consequences of the omnipresence of and possible overdependence on plastic materials in society, overloading the environment, as plastic products have allegedly become so pervasive, and needed, in contemporary life. This study places this issue in perspective, relying on a review of the related literature bringing together the fields both of industrial design and materials engineering. It also utilized semi-structured, in-depth interviews carried out with 16 specialists in polymers and industrial design of diversified professional expertise both in Brazil and Italy. Data treatment was done by means of the qualitative technique known as associative analysis of data, consisting of a disciplined process of inductive identification of abstract patterns within already selected, fragmented, and pre-treated data, as they are classified within major conceptual categories which themselves emerge during the treatment stages.