Plastic finally gets its due

Try to envision a world without plastic.

It’s not easy.

Plastic is a critical component of all modern communications devices, from computers to cellphones. Plastic keeps food fresh and sick people alive. You can even wear it.

Just about every conceivable use of plastic, as well as the history of polymers and their impact on modern life, is chronicled in the National Plastics Center and Museum in Leominster, a central Massachusetts city that once was the center of the industry.

“The most important part of our mission is education,” said Marianne Zephir, the museum’s collections director.

The center gets about 10,000 visitors a year, many of them children on school field trips, and offers age-appropriate educational programs for kids in kindergarten through high school seniors, teaching them about polymer chemistry, plastics engineering and the manufacturing process itself.

The center also reaches about 50,000 students a year through its PlastiVans, classrooms on wheels that visit schools across the country to educate and conduct hands-on experiments. One van is based in Leominster, with others located permanently in California, Texas and Michigan.

The museum has three permanent exhibits.

The Plastics in Medicine exhibit “tells the story of the medical field and how plastics revolutionized it,” Zephir said. Plastics are used in everything from small bandages to artificial joints.

Plastics are sometimes maligned for jamming landfills, but the Plastics and the Environment exhibit teaches about the recycling process, the development of biodegradable plastics and includes a live demonstration in which old milk jugs are turned into key chains.

The Plastics Hall of Fame celebrates dozens of key contributors to the industry, including John Wesley Hyatt, known as the “grandfather of the plastics industry”; Wilbert Gore, who helped develop Gore-Tex fabric; and Stephanie Kwolek, who led a team of DuPont scientists who developed Kevlar, now used in body armor.

Leominster has a long history with plastics. It’s been home to DuPont, Foster Grant and other major plastics manufacturers. It is the city where Earl Tupper, the inventor of Tupperware, got his start. Housewares, trashcans, optics and other plastic items are still made here.

The museum, located in an old school building, has a comprehensive research library with thousands of books and periodicals on the polymer industry.