Eine Plastikflasche bringt den Umweltwandel unserer Gegenwart einerseits mit Millionen Jahren geologischer Tiefenzeit und andererseits mit langen Zukunftslasten für die Biosphäre zusammen. Angesichts des Anthropozäns verdeutlicht uns die Plastikflasche, dass Kenntnisse und Perspektiven zur Vergangenheit unverzichtbar für zukunftsorientiertes Handeln sind.
A plastic bottle brings together the environmental change of our present with millions of years of deep geological time on the one hand and long future burdens for the biosphere on the other. In the Anthropocene, the plastic bottle makes it clear to us that knowledge of and perspectives on the past are indispensable for future-oriented action.
Plastic – deep time in a nutshell
Plastic consists of polymers, long chain molecules of hydrocarbon. The names of plastics therefore begin with ‘poly’: polyethylene, polyvinyl chloride, polypropylene, polystyrene, polyamide. These polymers are mainly obtained from naphtha by fractionation from crude oil.
The crude oil extracted today was formed in a long geological process from the mortal remains of organisms. Seventy percent of all oil deposits existing nowadays were formed during the Mesozoic Age (252 million to 66 million years ago. Like natural gas and coal, it is therefore a fossil fuel.
Humans have only been producing plastics from it for a good 70 years. Today we produce an excessive amount of plastic. A well-known problem is that oil will run out and is not renewable. The lesser-known problem is the eternal burden we are imposing on the future with our plastic products. Due to its long shelf life, plastic produced today will shape the world not only for our grandchildren, but also the geologically distant future.






Market: No market, no trade without plastic. Vendors need plastic containers or bags for stacking, carrying and beautifully displaying goods for customers, who often still carry their purchases home in plastic bags.
Deep past and deep future – thinking human history geologically
A geologically informed, and therefore very long-term view can show us the unprecedented suddenness of human-induced geological change (Bjornerud 2020, Zalasiewicz 2023). The real explosiveness of the Anthropocene concept lies in the point that the Anthropocene is postulated as a new geological epoch, not just as a new historical period, i.e. a period in the history of mankind (Antweiler 2025, for introduction BpB 2025).
Human products will be reflected in geological layers. This fundamental novelty is based on a geologically abrupt and worldwide accumulation of the effects of human life on the geosphere. The Anthropocene is thus located on a much more comprehensive level, both spatially and temporally, than is signalled by historical period terms such as ‘modernity’, ‘postmodernity’ and the so-called ‘petromodernity’ characterised by oil (see Klose & Steininger 2020, Auerochs 2024: 123-178).
With this long-term view, we can recognise the very long-term effects of our actions today on the future. In contrast to current sustainability concepts, the effects of today’s life and economic activity will not only affect the next generations, but the distant future of humanity and life in general. In short: by means of an extremely extended present, we humans are making earth history today.





Packaging: School lunches wrapped in paper are a thing of the past. Nowadays, most packaging contains plastic. Tablets are no longer conceivable without plastic. Blister packs show the contents of sweets and make our mouths water.
We live from, in and with plastic
Plastic is useful. It is practical because it can have many different properties (for an overview, see Ratzesberger 2019; for a history, see Braun 2017). It can be temperature-resistant, water-repellent, flexible and soft or hard. Plastic is light, compared to wood or metal, for example. Many plastics can be produced easily and cheaply.
Human life, indeed culture, is hardly conceivable without plastic. It is most commonly used worldwide as containers, packaging and means of transport. Plastic is also used in many ways in the construction industry and electronics industries. New forms of agriculture, such as aquaponics on high-rise buildings, would be unthinkable without the small plastic tubes used for food supply. A large proportion of medical equipment is made of plastic. Many medicines are made from petroleum. A look inside an intensive care unit shows us that many people would not live much longer without plastic.






Transport and storage: Plastic is light and stable. Plastic is used for a wide range of crates, bags and small containers. Plastic can be used to protect food from moisture, air and germs, allowing it to be stored for longer.
Plastic as hero and villain – the harmful usefulness of plastics
The industrial phase of the ‘Great Acceleration’, which according to many researchers marks the beginning of the Anthropocene, began around 1950. It is characterised by an enormous increase in population, increased water consumption, an enormous increase in dam construction and a sharp rise in the production of aluminium, concrete, paper, fertiliser and, of course, plastic.
The global mass of plastic produced worldwide is already greater than the total weight of all land and water animals (8.3 gigatonnes compared to 4 Gt; Zalasiewicz et al. 2017, Elhacham et al. 2020). Half of that mass of plastic was produced since 2000. Per year, we now produce about as much plastic as the total live weight of humanity. Thus, plastic dominates the ‘technosphere’ as the totality of material culture in the geosphere with her own dynamics.
Today, plastic particles can even be found in oceanic deep-sea trenches and will probably form geological layers there in the future.Small particles from a plastic bottle thrown into the North Sea or the Pacific today may still be there in 500 years’ time. Plastic does not go away. The plastics that have been produced since the 1950s and continue to be produced today will continue to characterise the surface of the earth into the distant future and have harmful effects on humans and other living creatures. Geologists are already documenting plastiglomerates, a new type of rock, a mixture of stones, metal and plastic that is created by uncontrolled fires on beaches. Where the container can stand for globalisation, the plastic bottle stands for the Anthropocene.




Construction industry: No building site without plastic. You can see plastic containers and plastic tarpaulins. In tropical countries in monsoon Asia, plastic sheeting protects against sun, rain or strong winds.
Asia as the continent of plastic … and the global plastosphere
Pictures from Asia show the weal and woe of plastic. I took the pictures on longer journeys in the years 2023 to 2025. The scenes are from South Asia, especially India, and South-East Asia, particularly Indonesia, Thailand and Cambodia. Much of the current modernisation is taking place in some Asian countries. This is especially true for cities. Countries are becoming more and more modernised, and rapidly so. More and more people are reaching the middle class and households are consuming more and more goods.
Originally developed and produced in the western industrialised coutries, most of the world’s plastic production now comes from Asia. China is the largest producer of toys in the world. Many other plastic products from Asia, for example from China, India and Pakistan, end up in our supermarkets. Contrary to many assurances, our industry promotes plastic consumption in many ways (Goebel & Wermter 2023).






Collection and separation of waste and plastic recycling: Plastic is used for containers for waste collection and separation. As in southern Europe, for example, many consumers in Asia have so far been reluctant to separate waste. In some regions of Asia, plastic bags are recycled. Plastic bags are increasingly being banned.
What we see … and what we don’t
I can see the plastic bottle in the sea. The huge plastic waste vortex in the Indian Ocean can even be seen from space. In contrast, plastic particles in the soil and oceans are invisible to humans due to their dispersion (Bancone 2020, Rangel-Buitrago et al. 2024). As an invisible companion, microplastics are found in waters and the bodies of many living creatures, including each and every one of us (Bajer et al. 2023 as an overview).
The photos show plastic in the medium size range. This means they cannot show this crucial aspect. Microplastics are not perceptible without instruments, just like other massive changes, such as the radionuclides spread globally in the soil or the ozone in the atmosphere. A large proportion of the plastic thus forms an object typical of the Anthropocene, a “hyperobject” (Morton 2013): A spatially distributed object that cannot be perceived by humans but can be measured.
Further reading
Overviews
Bjornerud, Marcia (22020): Zeitbewusstheit. Geologisches Denken und wie es helfen könnte, die Welt zu retten. Berlin: Matthes & Seitz. Seitz (orig. „Timefulness. How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World”, Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2018).
Ratzesberger, Pia (2019): Plastik. 100 Seiten. Ditzingen: Reclam.
Zalasiewicz, Jan (2023): Die verborgene Geschichte der Erde: Was Gesteine uns verraten. Bern: Haupt Verlag (orig. „How to Read a Rock. Our Planet´s Hidden Stories”, Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 2022).
In-depth Studies
Antweiler, Christoph (2025): Menschen machen Erdgeschichte. Mensch und Erde im Anthropozän. München: Oekom.
Auerochs, Florian (2024): Ökologische Petrofiction, Verschmutzungskrisen in der Gegenwartsliteratur. Berlin: J. B. Metzler (Environmental Humanities, 3).
Bajer, Kamila, Kim-Kristin Buttenschön, Monika Zulawski (2023): Mikroplastik: der unsichtbare Begleiter Herkunft, Nachweis, Auswirkungen und unser Umgang damit. Berlin: Institut für Innovation und Technik (iit perspective, 68).
Bancone, C. E. P., Turner, S. D., Ivar do Sul, J. A., & Rose, N. L. (2020): The Palaeoecology of Microplastic Accumulation. Frontiers in Environmental Science 8: 574008.
Braun, Dietrich(22017): Kleine Geschichte der Kunststoffe. München: Carl Hanser Verlag.
Goebel, Jacqueline & Benedict Wermter (2023): Die Plastiksucht. Wie Konzerne Milliarden verdienen und uns abhängig machen. Frankfurt am Main: Finanzbuchverlag
Elhacham, Emily, Liad Ben-Uri, Jonathan Grozovski, Yinon M. Bar-On & Ron Milo (2020): Global Human-Made Mass Exceeds All Living Biomass. Nature 588: 442–444.
Klose, Alexander & Benjamin Steininger (2020): Erdöl. Ein Atlas der Petromoderne. Berlin: Matthes & Seitz.
Morton, Timothy (2013): Hyperobjects. Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press (Posthumanities, 27).
Rangel-Buitrago, Nelson, François Galgani & William J. Neal (2024): The geological footprint of plastics. Science of the Total Environment 950(10):175366
Zalasiewicz, Jan et al. (2017): Scale and Diversity of the Physical Technosphere: A Geological Perspective. The Anthropocene Review 4(1): 9-22.
Christoph Antweiler is an anthropologist and senior professor at the Institute of Oriental and Asian Studies (IOA) at the University of Bonn.
Image credit: all pictures Christoph Antweiler, except Craig Antweiler (1) and Maria Blechmann-Antweiler (2).